There should be more dancing

A friend threw a ceilidh for her birthday. She organised a band and a caller, and a big hall, and food and drink, and a heap of friends. The music started, the caller called, and many people danced. It took me a while to warm up. I had a few glasses of champagne, and chatted with a dozen people. But finally my daughter dragged me in and I danced, and I remembered. I remembered going to barn dances when I was a kid; clubbing in my early twenties; and dancing at school trivia nights in my thirties (sad, I know). I remembered a friend’s wedding, and dancing in red heels until it was well past time to carry sleepy children home. I love to dance around my kitchen, but I had forgotten how much fun it is to dance with other people.

We did the heel-and-toe polka, a square dance, and a reel or two. By the end of the night, adults were skipping and giggling and throwing each other around by the elbows as we shot up the reel, and the kids were almost getting good at it. On the way home, my daughters said, ‘We should do this every week,’ and I agreed. There should be more dancing.

Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet”. But I’m not convinced it’s like the stuffy middle class Anglo Christian wedding banquets I’ve had to attend, with lame speeches and bland food and dealcoholized wine. Jesus was Jewish, so I reckon that if heaven is like a wedding, it’s like a Jewish wedding. A friend once told me that one of the good things about being Jewish is that she had to learn to dance. At every wedding there is dancing, and absolutely everyone dances, young or old. Anyone who tries not to looks like an idiot. They are squashed against a wall as the party goes wild, until some old lady grabs them by the hand and drags them into the fray.

So, the kingdom of heaven is like a Jewish wedding. Or, perhaps, a ceilidh. At my friend’s party I watched balding men dance with their young daughters, and a two-year-old totter up the reel, and girls on the verge of puberty dancing with each other, and people in their sixties who couldn’t count to four and did every step wrong but kept dancing anyway. There were friends from other countries and friends with intellectual disabilities and straight people and gay people and country people and city people and Christians and atheists and a pagan priestess. Together these people laughed and danced and communicated across the boundaries of age and sex, culture and capability; and I saw the kingdom of heaven.

I look around the churches, so full of people who find it hard to dance. Like me at times, they sit against the wall and watch, but turn down invitations to participate. And I wonder whether we will enjoy the heavenly wedding banquet, and what we will say when Jesus puts out his hand and requests the pleasure of this dance.

Participant observation, with cake

 

My daughter wanted to go to the park after kindergarten. So I walked her over and then, ignoring the knots of chatting parents, went and sat under a tree. I was feeling introverted; I had a crossword in my bag; I thought I could solve a few clues while my daughter played.

Within a few minutes, kids were gathering round. 'What are you doing?' they asked, then 'Look at me! Look at me!' they called. A two-year-old sibling leaned into my side. 'You're her [my daughter's] mother,' she said knowingly. Then she offered me a gumnut.

I thanked her for the gumnut, and we talked about its shape and pretty colour. Then I turned back to my crossword and filled in a few squares. She went for a wander, telling to me to watch her.

'No thanks,' I said, 'I'll do my crossword while you go for a walk.'

'Ok,' she said. A few minutes later she was back, with a pocket full of gumnuts. 'We're making cake,' she announced. I asked what was in her cake. Silence. 'Broccoli?' I asked. 'No!' she said, laughing. 'Beans?' I asked. 'Noooo!' she said again. 'Chocolate?' I asked. 'Yes!' she crowed, 'and sugar! And eggs!'

'Sounds delicious,' I said.

She had a little stick which she was using to stir the 'gredients' in her pocket. 'Mix, mix, mix' she said.

Then she found another little stick and handed it over. 'You stir,' she instructed, holding her pocket open and leaning towards me.

I gave up on the crossword, and gave the cake a good stir. She baked it, cut it up, and gave me a slice. Together, we ate. 'Good!' she said.

***

There are reams written about how to study kids and childhood. There are certainly projects which seek to find out particular things and which require formal methods; but in general I find the suggestion that researchers need special techniques to talk with kids slightly ludicrous.

I'm not naturally good with kids. I'd never make a kinder teacher; I don't like children's birthday parties; and group work will never be my forte. I always find new kids and groups of kids slightly terrifying; and too much time with children drives me batty. Even so, it seems pretty clear to me that kids are just people. They swell up when we remember their names; they like us to speak quietly and with respect; they appreciate it when we join in their games. It's not rocket science – and it's hardly different from adults. I may not mix gumnuts in your pocket, but if I remember your name, take you seriously, and engage in whatever you think is fun – a coffee, a chat, a walk, a joke – chances are you'll think I'm a good egg.

At the park, the little girl and I were just playing; but I have no doubt that, had I asked a few gentle questions while we mixed our cake, she would have told me to the best of her ability whatever I wanted to know. In fact, I didn't need to ask her anything to learn something about my own interests. I'm studying friendships between children and adults; and just the way our interaction unfolded spoke volumes about how kids and adults communicate and share small intimacies.

If I had been wearing my researcher hat, I could have described my role as 'participant observation', and written about the event from an 'autoethnographic perspective'. But she's not a formal part of my project, and I was only wearing a sunhat, so I wrote this post, instead.

How I came to own the philosophy of work-life balance naked, wet, at seven o’clock in the morning

 

I was in the shower, steam everywhere, when someone walked into the bathroom. I twitched open the shower curtains to peek and there was my four-year-old, sitting on the loo and swinging her legs. 'Hi Mum,' she said, 'we're going to the zoo. Are you coming?'

It was school holidays. My husband had taken two days off work to be with the kids and free me to study; apparently he was taking them to the zoo.

As the water pounded my back, I shook my head and said, 'No thanks, today I'll stay home and do some work.'

'Because it's more important,' she said wisely, then gave me a kind smile.

Such a dagger to the guts. I grew up in a house where my mother's work was more important than everything else, and didn't we know it. As children, we were given to understand that we were highly treasured and highly privileged; as such, other less privileged people needed her time more than we did, and we were never to complain. I often dreamed of having a stay-at-home mum, the sort of comfortable person who enjoyed being with me and who baked cookies. And yet, when I spent time with other people's stay-at-home mums, I often didn't feel very comfortable; and it wasn't actually something I wanted from the woman who was my mother. If she'd stayed home, she would have gone berserk, and driven me crazy in the process. She drove me crazy enough as it was.

But I resented the primacy of work in her life; everyone else knew her better than me. And my sister and I spent so much of our childhoods just waiting. We'd hang round church for hours, waiting for her to be done, and not allowed to leave without her; we'd hang around the house waiting for her sudden gallop through the hall, clutching a pile of papers and yelling at us to hurry up. We'd sit on the back step after school, hot, thirsty, and busting to pee, waiting for her to come home from wherever she was and let us in; for years, we couldn't have a key because she worried about 'latchkey kids'. (As to whether being a 'doorstep kid' is worse, I'm not sure; I certainly was happier when I could let myself and get a glass of water.)

I can see that the stressors on her were enormous. She was a ground breaker in her field and worked far more than full time, yet she was also never able to relinquish the idea of the 'proper mother'. Despite her work hours, she also tried to iron the sheets and make pizza from scratch and pretend that work had no impact on her children. I can see this and I feel sad for her; but I'm still not at peace with her choices. I have no problem with parents working, but they have to make good arrangements for their kids. So when my four-year-old asserted, very comfortably, that my work was more important than wandering around the zoo with her, I felt sick.

Was it true? I wondered. Did I really think my work was more important?

Well, when it came down to it, probably yes. She hardly needed both parents walking her through the butterfly house, and her dad would do a good job. I had spent the last three days fooling around with her, her sisters, and their assorted friends, and now I needed to do something different. On the other hand, working wasn't more important than spending time with her, per se; it was just more important right now. Such old scripts and philosophical knots one has to untangle in the shower while a four-year-old is staring fixedly at one's breasts!

All this reflection happened in a second or two. Then I said that work wasn't more important; but that what was important was to have balance. 'I need to play with you and read you stories a bit, and I need to work a bit, and I need to cook, wash and clean the house a bit. I've done lots of playing and reading and cooking and cleaning and washing this week, so now it's time for some working. And I can do this while you're at the zoo.'

'Okay,' she said, as her eyes travelled curiously up and down. It's too cold for regular nakedness in my house and I realised that it had been a while since she'd seen me undressed. She hopped off the loo, flushed, washed her hands, took one last good look, then wandered out of the bathroom.

So that was how I came to own the philosophy of work-life balance naked, wet, at seven o'clock in the morning. Meanwhile, with any luck, my four-year-old learned two things. One, that balance is important. And two, that some adult women have pubic hair.

Thanks to her dad for the photo of the hand and the butterfly!

Vacations, or why going on a holiday is a really good idea!

This piece first appeared in the December issue of Equip.

***

Ah, vacations. Pack the car with kids and pillows and bathers and towels; shove in the cards, a box of dice, half a dozen pencils and a bundle of scrap paper; throw in a rounders bat and a few balls, a paintbox, a guitar. Pull on a faded old t-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts, and head to the beach. Or the mountains or the plains or a river somewhere... wherever takes your fancy, wherever you can put up a tent or park a caravan or hire a house. Somewhere simple, somewhere cheap. Leave the computers, the electronic games, the television at home. Forget about your emails, your nice clothes, the urgency in your tone. Get away. Put your feet up. Relax.

Why? Because God calls us to three things: worship, work and play. And while most of us give work a red hot go, filling even our leisure hours with a sense of pressing busy-ness, and while many of us make the time for worship, most of us rarely play. Worse, many of us have largely forgotten how; what so many of us do for recreation doesn’t even begin to restore us.

Most Australians watch three hours of television a day. Television, which bombards us with corporate conceptions of the good life which few can resist; which floods our homes with vacuity and violence; which fills the room so we don’t have to listen to our doubts and fears or the quiet voice: this is not play. The smartphone, so pretty with its bells and whistles, so indispensible, rendering the user so emotionally absent that they may as well not be in the room: this is not play.

Recreational shopping, a relic of Victorian times when the only socially legitimate public places for wealthy women to be were church or the shops; which fills our houses and stretches our budgets with unnecessary junk made from finite resources; which defines us not by who we are but by what we buy: this is not play.

So what is play? Play is not about consumption. It is never really competitive. It’s not another thing to excel at, or to get wrong. Instead, it’s all those pointless unproductive things which absorb you on vacation: gazing out the window; doodling in the dirt; going for a stroll; building a sandcastle; chewing on a grass stem; fooling around with totem tennis; tickling a three year old; reading fiction and children’s books. It’s playing parlour games: beetle, hangman, fan tan, 500. It’s learning to sing rounds, and getting it all hopelessly, hilariously, wrong. It’s preparing a fancy dinner just because you want to, or eating nothing but cheese and dips because nobody feels like cooking.

Play is all about re-creation and restoration. When you play, you are present in the moment; you can let go of your worries about tomorrow, and your ambitions, anxieties and fears. You can allow difficult crazy questions to bubble up and let them hang there, unanswered. Play puts things into perspective. It shows you what is really important – usually less than you think – and leaves enough room for God.

So take a break! Go away! Don’t bother with plane tickets or theme parks or exotic locations. Instead, find a quiet corner of the state with a forest, a creek, or a beach and re-learn how to play.

Teach your kids French cricket. You can’t be puffed up and important when you’re puffed out and you’ve just missed the ball and the kids are running rings around you, giggling. Leave the duties of home. You can’t feel so precious about cooking when the fanciest thing on the menu is sausages. Forget the dishwasher. Show the kids how much fun it is to splash bubbles in the sink as they wash dishes, and dry them, and put them all away. Leave them to it, and they will delight in your trust, and glow with the pride of being useful.

Don’t worry about the camera; you will remember what is important. Instead, just sit. Tuck yourself against a dune, sun your legs and watch the children paddle in the shallows. The sound of the waves, the shirring of the sand, the shiver of the grasses: listen, and in them you may hear the voice of silence.

Go for a walk with your eyes open. You’ll soon see a small thing: a cicada shell, a sun-bleached bone. Recognise the invitation and ponder the brevity of life. Watch the sky and realise how small you are. Give thanks for the time you have on earth. Wonder how you want to fill your remaining days; what would you like to look back on? It’s easy to fill a life with working, watching screens, looking for the right shoes, striving to impress. But is this enough?

Perhaps you’d rather look back on a life filled with gratitude. Do you yearn for pools of calm, those precious times when you were entirely in your own skin and deeply content? Would you like to remember long nights of stories and shared laughter? Quiet cuddles when nobody’s in a rush? Slow minutes observing birds, or trees silhouetted against the sky? Hours of silliness when everyone laughs until their sides ache?

What is worth putting energy into? What is worth remembering? What is worth paying attention to? And how then will you live? When you have pondered these questions, you are ready for home. Forget the souvenir t-shirts and key rings; you have enough stuff. Instead, bring back your new resolve. Unplug the tv, turn off the phone, give away the junk which clogs your house and weighs you down. Sit quietly for a few minutes each day, letting go of what you haven’t done and what you will fail to do; feel the oceans of time ahead of you, instead. After dinner, play a card game, or read, or knit. Write a letter to an old friend. Go to bed early. See what unfolds.

A vacation, taken slowly, can show you how destructive your choices can be: the big house and all the stuff in it; the drive to seek promotion or the next fancy gadget; the impulse to be busy busy busy and never rest. It can give you a healthy distance from the manipulating politics of the workplace, the media, the schoolyard, the extended family. It can liberate you as you realise you are not a demigod, appointed to fix everything; no Atlas, the world doesn’t rest on your shoulders.

More, a good vacation will remind you that you are not a barren person needing to be entertained; you are not a fragile person needing to prove how good you are; you are not an empty person needing to stuff yourself with the empty promises of consumerism. No, in the rest, in the silence, in the playfulness of a proper vacation, you will discover that you are a child of God. You are valued not for what you do, but for who you are; you have far more than enough; and you are deeply satisfied.

So pack your bags with no more than you need, and turn off your phone. Square your shoulders, take a deep breath... and go!

A letter to everyone who has asked about the new school

 

I am often asked about our new school. We've been there about a month and I'm enjoying the honeymoon period, even as I feel sad about the many parents and relationships I have left behind. I can't keep up with a schoolful of parents, and I miss saying hello, comparing shoes, sharing a joke or talking about the weather with people that I know.

But the new school! What a relief! It's like coming home.

What shall I describe? The welcome? The principal who warmly greets the students every morning at a short assembly, and revs them up for the day? The teachers who have invited me to visit their classroom any time; who have identified my daughters' strengths and weaknesses and gently pushed them already? The kids who have asked my girls to birthday parties, and who have quickly become friends? The parents who have come up to me in the playground and introduced themselves? The good conversations I've had, coffee in hand, with new acquaintances on the deck of the school canteen?

Should I describe the transformation in my children? Last year, school refusal; this year, eager anticipation? Last year, chicken scratch; this year, beautifully formed letters? Last year, constant daily squabbling; this year, quiet cheerfulness?

Should I write about the shift in me, from anxiety to confidence, from being overwhelmed by anger to being flooded by gratitude? By the end of last year I had nothing but scathing contempt for school, and felt sick with guilt when I had to leave my kids there; we took many days off. This year, I feel confident that they are in good hands. One friend, who moved with us from our old school to our new, looked appraisingly at me in the playground last week. 'There's something different,' she said, 'I haven't seen you smile in a school playground for a year, now you smile all the time.'

But I don't think I'll tell you about these things; I will write about the grounds, instead. The red brick school is built on a hilltop; the land slopes sharply down to chickens, veggies, and rambling gardens dotted with climbing frames, fruit trees, eucalypts and cubbies. At the bottom of the hill, the ground flattens into a wide oval. The breeze roars up from the south and dances in the treetops. Five miles from the city centre, a large freeway to the west: yet it feels like the middle of the country.

In the grounds stands an old windmill, mounted on a steel frame. My six-year-old climbed the frame the other day, to just below the blades. I was still in the grounds and saw her, so I went over and called her down, suggesting that getting her hair caught in a windmill blade was probably not a good idea. I was also a bit worried about the host of other kids who, inspired by her, were now trying to clamber up.

I've come from a school where control became the order of the day. Parents were allowed in the school in very limited capacities; the grounds were locked at nights and weekends; my daughter was constantly shouted at for climbing; almost everything was presented as an unacceptable risk. I mentioned my daughter's exploit to our new vice principal, to gauge her response. 'Hmm,' she said, 'perhaps suggest to her that she can climb it on the weekend, just not in school hours.'

'Sure,' I said. Inside I was turning cartwheels. Where once she would have been yelled at, here she has been given an appropriate time and an invitation. Here, she can be a kid and take good risks. Here, the gates are never locked. We are all welcome at any time, on any day.

I was expecting the transition to be long, slow and difficult, but it has been a dream. My nine-year-old is radiant; she frequently describes a school day as 'the best I've ever had'. My six-year-old has said the same thing. A cheeky active kid, she also said, 'I love this school. I don't get yelled at all day.' She is experiencing steady, calm discipline, and in its quiet predictability she has relaxed – and finds it easy to behave.

I am so grateful that, where last year I withdrew from everything, this year I am signing up for things: the canteen; reading in the classroom; and the chook roster. Next week, we will go in on Saturday and Sunday, let the chooks out, give them clean water, and have a long play. I can't wait to see my daughter up the windmill again then. And from that vantage point, maybe she can blow the old school a raspberry.

Though not at the people. We do miss you.

A sanity tax leads to life in abundance

 

What does it mean when a woman who has been reasonably happy to be home with young children no longer wants to be home with young children, and yet still has a four-year-old at home? How can she be a good parent to the little one? How can she retain her sanity?

I don't know why I post it as a theoretical question. This is personal: these are questions I've been asking myself for six months or more. This year I get more time than I have had for nearly a decade to work, study, and do my thing, but it's still not enough. My youngest is at home a couple of days a week, and by the middle of a day with her, I am ready to scream; instead, I ignore her while she plays, and often say no when she asks me to join in. 'Mummy doesn't play,' I say. 'Mummy reads to you or cooks with you, but mummy doesn't play.' I don't want to sit on the floor; I don't want to pretend; I don't want to converse with a four-year-old for more than half a day. Quite simply, I've had enough.

How I did it for nearly ten years, I don't know. How did I sip imaginary tea and set out bead patterns and chat about the neighbour's cat? And why can't I do it anymore? I've grown out of her life stage more than a year too soon.

I realise it's the first time I've had a four-year-old without a younger sibling around to absorb her attention. Meanwhile, many of our friends have moved on: parents have picked up more hours at work; children are in school or childcare; and even if there were lots of people left to play with, I've moved on too. I want to do stuff, not arrange coffee mornings just so my kid is occupied.

I felt like I should feel guilty that I managed to be there for her two older sisters when I don't want to be there for her. But I'm not guilty. I've stayed home with her as much as I can, but now it costs too much. And if I'm honest, our three daughters have had three different parenting experiences as I moved through my own life stages; this is really nothing more than the next stage.

Realising this led me to think about our parenting model. What do I want my children to learn? What version of womanhood do I want to model for my daughters? Is a woman is someone who subjugates her needs to theirs way beyond the point of her own happiness and health? Or is a woman a person who is engaged in the work that she loves, whether it's in the home or in the wider world? I realised I'd like my girls to see that I'm doing things that stimulate me and give me life. I used to love being at home; now I don't. I love spending some time with her, but not all day. When I clarified that, I realised it was certainly time for a change. Staying home with her more than half a day each day no longer felt like an option.

So I tried to work out how best to care for her. I explained to her that this year she'd be at kinder for three mornings, and then I asked her what she wanted to do on the other days. Childcare, perhaps? Um, no. Adamantly not. She hates childcare by any name. We dipped her toe in the waters of childcare once or twice and she is still furious about it. Kinder good, childcare bad: that's her motto.

'If not childcare, then what?' I asked. Very firmly she said, 'Stay home with you.' 'Does it need to be me?' I said. 'An adult who loves me,' she said.

Good answer – but how frustrating. Secretly, I wanted her to go to childcare like every other kid, and I wanted to be able to tell myself and the world that it's what she wants to do: to spend time with a group of kids running riot. Instead, I realised that I had three options: (1) stay home with her; (2) force her into childcare and betray her trust in me that I will arrange what is best for her; or (3) come up with another solution which respects her desires but also keeps me from going right out of my mind.

I have tried and tried the first option. For more than six months I have sought ways to enjoy being home with her. She is a delightful child, independent, bright, funny, and imaginative. As I watch her games, help her cook muffins, and listen to her made up jokes I don't know why I don't want to be with her. But I'm past that stage.

Option one was wiped out. Given how articulate my daughter is about her need to be home, I couldn't face enrolling her in childcare; that eliminated option two. Option three? I wondered how she could be at home with someone who loves her, and how that someone could not be me. Her daddy is already home with her more time than he can really spare from work; he couldn't pick up any more. We have no grannies. Her auntie works. Our friends all work or have kids of their own.

Finally, after weeks of pondering, I thought of her uncle. He's between jobs. He adores her. She adores him. He's gentle and kind and loves to cook. Perhaps, I thought, he could be with her a morning each week. They could read stories and go to the library, and I could do my thing. The arrangement could last as long as they both enjoyed it, or until he found better work.

I asked him. He grinned from ear to ear and said yes. I asked my daughter. She grinned from ear to ear and said yes. This boded well.

So on Friday morning I went out. I had a coffee and prepared a workshop. I bumped into new neighbours and had an adult chat. I ran a few errands. And I came home full of energy. I found my brother-in-law finishing the dishes, and my daughter snipping paper into little strips and singing. There was a warm chocolate cake on the bench, waiting for me. As I had a slice, he wiped out the oven and I nearly passed out. The cake was incredible – and I've never seen a man wipe out an oven before. He's worth his weight in gold.

One of my friends pays her sister to nanny the kids a few hours each week. She calls it her sanity tax. I'm paying my brother-in-law and I was thinking of it as a sanity tax, too. For us, it might mean less meals out – big deal! Because if sanity comes in the shape of a workshop drafted and a neighbour well met, a chocolate cake and a clean oven, a man with a spring in his step and cash in his pocket, and a singing child: this is so much more than my sanity. This is abundant life for all of us, and is worth whatever we can afford.

Being bored at the hair salon

My nine-year-old, my four-year-old and I were hanging around the hairdressers as my six-year-old had her hair cut; after months of her begging, I had finally agreed to a bob. Another four-year-old was waiting there, too. As her mother read a magazine and had extensions and highlights tended to, the girl wandered around the salon touching things. There was a plastic ice cream cone in the window display. ‘Put that down,’ said her mother. There was a plastic lemon. ‘Put that down too!’

The girl headed to the door to stare at the busses and cars trundling past, and to watch the people walking to the shops. ‘Get out of the doorway,’ said her mother.

The girl had a notebook and a pen. She brought them over and gave them to my nine-year-old without a word. ‘Oh, leave those people alone,’ her mother said. But my nine-year-old smiled, found a blank page, and carefully drew the girl a picture. The girl grinned.

I pulled out some storybooks to read to my four-year-old. The girl wandered over and leaned against my knee. ‘Come here,’ her mother said.

‘It’s alright,’ I said and asked the girl what she liked to read. At home she had some Dora books, and some Barbies. My battered Little Golden Books didn’t look like much chop to her, but she chose one and we read bits of the story. She didn’t have the patience to sit out a book, or even a whole nursery rhyme. Instead, we’d read a bit, then she’d wander to the door, be told again to get out of the doorway, come back and listen to more.

After a while, I gave up trying to read from beginning to end. Instead, we looked at the pictures and talked about what might be happening; then checked some of the words to see what they said. I gave her a book to look at. She held it upside down. I was trying to work out if she knew it was topsy-turvy when her mother interrupted my little experiment. ‘Give back the book,’ she said.

Books exhausted, my own four-year-old became so bored she started rolling off the couch in slow motion, her eyes bulging out of her head. ‘I think she’s dying,’ I said to the girl, ‘it’s slow death by boredom.’

The girl looked at me seriously, then noticed a bag of rollers dangling from a nearby trolley. She picked up one and posted it through a slot in the trolley, where it fell back into the bag. My youngest daughter’s eyes sparked. She flopped off the couch and posted a roller, too.

The girl’s mother apologised for her daughter again as our girls turned rollers into dolls, walking them up and down the sofa, and stopping for chats, cuddles and kisses. Then they turned them into salt and pepper shakers, and put too much pepper in their soup. ‘Be careful,’ said the mother to her daughter. ‘Don’t break them.’ I don’t know how a four-year-old could break a plastic roller, but there you go.

I’m not sure why the mother thought her daughter should wait for hours while she had elaborate things done to her hair. I’m not sure why she was reluctant to have me read to the girl, sitting in plain sight with my own kids with me. It was no skin off my nose; in fact, it helped dissipate the frustration I was feeling from being made to wait forty minutes past our appointment time, and then getting a hairdresser who kept stopping to chat with other adults in the salon.

I’m no saint, and I’m not much of a kid person. I’m grumpy and tired and at the fag end of the school holidays when all I want to do is tell every kid I see to go away. But in the salon with my daughters, feeling annoyed by the hairdresser and bored out of my wits, it cost absolutely nothing to chat with another bored person, even a little one.

More than that, her presence was a small gift, a welcome focus and an ease to the frustration I was feeling. I only wish I’d thanked her mother for the way the girl brightened my day.

Playing her way into freedom

 

I'm enjoying a short break, by which I mean I'm spending much more time with my kids over the summer holidays. It's a break from blogging, at least! Below is another piece from the archives, on girls and play. It was originally published in Zadok Perspectives No. 115 (Winter 2012).

***

For years now Olivia, my six year old, has insisted on choosing her own clothes. Recently she wore purple shorts embossed with glittery rhinestones; a pink and purple t-shirt; and large white sunglasses with pink arms. Her fingernails were painted purple; she had saved up her pocket money to buy nail polish. Her blonde hair swung in a perky ponytail, as demanded from her personal stylist (me); and as we walked to school, she dangled her sparkly sunglasses case from her wrist. I felt like I was accompanying a very short Paris Hilton.

It was a far cry from the unisex overalls of my day. Olivia wouldn't be caught dead in them and somehow that, for me, embodies a fundamental shift. I had short practical hair and no dresses with frills; and when I was a girl in the feminist 70's, my mother refused to buy me a doll. She had had to fight every step of the way to enter her profession, and so she wasn't going to have her daughters forced into the narrow roles expected of women. My sister and I were given blocks, trucks, and books, but nothing related to the domestic arts. We looked longingly at our friends' dolls; but, given the chance to play with them, usually discovered we had no idea how to make them interesting. We'd end up climbing trees, making mud pies or playing hide and seek, instead; and overalls were excellent for all that.

My mother never would have dreamed that, thirty years later, her grandchildren would be encouraged to play in narrower and emptier gender roles than even she had experienced. As a child of the 50's, she was to practice being a wife and mother, but fairy princess brides – a common conflation among the six year old set these days – were practically unheard of.

Now fortunes are made out of fairy dress ups and princess accessories and high heels for little girls; and everything, from lunchboxes to headbands, from bracelets to backpacks to bedroom furniture, come in a nauseating shade of pink. The colour is so prevalent that it takes a certain determination to dress one's girls without it. Thirty years ago, I read children's books; now many books are clearly marked by their covers as 'boys' or 'girls'. My sister and I played with Lego in primary colours; now girls can have pink Lego mansions and fairy castles, with white Lego horses to match. Many Lego women strut about with swollen red lips and little handbags, while the men continue to look sturdy and practical, nice strong firemen and astronauts and policemen that they are.

It's enough to make me cry – and yet it's unsurprising. Every revolution is followed by a backlash; and what we see now is a cultural backlash against the rhetoric of feminism. While my friends work as doctors and lawyers and architects – often maintaining all the while that they aren't really feminists – their daughters play at being fairy princess brides, just waiting for Mr Right to whisk them away. These girls will be able to work in almost any profession. They see women on road crews, women driving trucks, and women running businesses; they see a woman leading the country; and, if they are not too exhausted by the grinding combination of paid employment, childrearing and housework, they will be able to seek legal recourse when they are discriminated against on the basis of gender. Yet much of the play encouraged by the mainstream centres on being utterly useless: lovelorn mermaids or beautiful consumers, perhaps, but that's about it.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a girl playing at domesticity. I could have used some domestic games, but it was clear in our house that I was to nurse no dollies; and as an adult, I studied in the 'male' domain of pure mathematics. I never rested there. The first time I felt comfortable in my work was when I became a stay at home mum. It took a long time for me to understand that it was legitimate for me to love being at home, share in my husband's income, and not want to be professionally employed; and it took an even longer time before I became confident in the role, as I had rarely practiced as a child. Domestic games would have helped me explore and understand motherhood a little before I was thrown in the deep end with real children.

My upbringing was too narrow, in its way; but what is offered to many girls these days feels even more constricting. There is almost no unisex, now. Somewhere between my mother's banning of domestic games and the pink of the fairy princess bride, there must be a medium.

That medium resides, I think, in the integrity of daily life. We shouldn't deny that many women marry, cook, clean and have kids; we also shouldn't swallow the lie that all girls want to become vacuous celebrity idols (which is where the fairy princess bride is heading). Instead, we need to continue the as yet unrealised feminist, and Christian, project, which is to accept and enable women not as the dominant powers approve of them – sexualised, decorative or invisible – but exactly as they are. The perfect human, Jesus, loved every woman he met not for her value to him, but for her very self; and we are to model our lives on his example.

These days, whether they are domestic goddesses or professionals hell bent on success, carers for young or old, married or single, ministers or lay, bursting with energy or quietly effective or slowly dwindling, women come in stunning kaleidoscopic variety and, as followers of Jesus, we are called to love them all. Meanwhile, as parents and guardians, we can encourage and equip our kids to explore the roles of the real women they see around them. So brides, yes; cleaners, yes; wives, yes; but fairy princess muck – well, limit their gauzy wings and turn a blind eye when they act it out anyway.

So I have given my daughter more freedom than I experienced as a child. Olivia nurses dollies and rocks them to sleep; she takes them for walks in the pram. It's useful to try on the roles we see around us, and so it is good for her to practice being a wife, a mum, a cleaner, a cook – and a writer. When she's not being a mother, she often sits at her 'desk' at the end of the kitchen table to write, like me; and woe betide anyone who touches her pens and paper.

The good news is that, despite a dominant mainstream which sells training bras to three year olds, pink plastic horses poised for coitus to four year olds, and sexy pop idols to five year olds, children find ways to step aside. (Of course, this is easier when their exposure to such things is limited.) There are days when Olivia is dressed to the nines; there are days when she is a rock star, dancing and pouting round the kitchen; there are days when she is a bride, dressed in a white satin dress from the op shop.

But on other days she builds trains out of chairs, makes tickets, punches them, and roars us all off to London. She erects cubbies and digs holes in the garden. She climbs trees – tearing every long dress that she insists on wearing in the process – and yells over the front fence. She shuffles through papers and barks into her mobile phone, just like dad; she watches bugs in our pond, and catches spiders and beetles and cockroaches to examine in her insect magnifier. Her fingernails may be painted purple, but they are always chipped and grubby, a sure sign of activity and adventure.

Even when she is dressed liked Paris Hilton, she is trying on only one of a hundred roles: mother, wife, daughter, writer, lawyer, cleaner, rock star, fashionista, tree climber, gardener, plumber, teacher, entomologist, train driver, and everything else she sees. Watching her, I have great confidence that if Olivia can continue to explore life without the ideological limitations placed on my own childhood and yet without kowtowing to the consumer state we live in, she will play her way into a sure self-knowledge and the power that comes from that freedom.

Just leave them to it!

 

I hate to break it to you, but there is no right way for a three-year-old to colour in and cut out a picture of a shoe. I know you’re trying very hard to be the best mummy that you can be, but let it go. Just let it go.

At the library today I watched you at story time. My daughter was there too, listening and singing along. When they passed out the activity, she collected a pack, plonked herself down, chose some crayons, and coloured in her shoe just the way she wanted. Then she picked up the safety scissors, stuck out her tongue, and snip snip snipped her way around the edge. While she was occupied I sent a few text messages, sitting alone because you were sitting on the floor, showing your kid how to do it properly.

My daughter finished and grinned. It wasn’t the world’s neatest colouring in, and it wasn’t the slickest bit of cutting out. But she was happy. She picked up her shoe, and brought it over to me. She asked me to thread in the frayed lace, which really was too tricky for her, so I did. 'Good,' she said. Then she stuck her shoe in our bag and chose a couple of books, and we read some stories.

Meanwhile you were still on the floor. You were making sure the colours were blocked in nicely, checking with your child which colours you should use. And your child was looking at anything but the shoe that you had taken for yourself. You kept trying to bring your child’s attention back to the activity, so they did a quick scribble to feign interest, but their heart wasn’t in it.

Your kid glimpsed the scissors, and picked them up. ‘No!’ you said, ‘sharp!’. But I can tell you that those scissors don’t cut fingers. They are safety scissors, for little people to cut paper. It takes real dexterity and determination to use them to cut fingers; and your child appears to have had so little practice that there is no fear of that. I watched you pick up the scissors and cut out the picture, very neatly; you’re almost 40, and you’re getting pretty good at it. You deserve a gold star!

But your kid was bored – and it is not your kid’s shoe. You took it away from them the moment you picked up a crayon. You might stick it on the fridge for a week or two, but your kid won’t be showing it to anyone. They know it was your work.

Trust me, there really is no right way to colour in. If your kid needs to practice their fine motor skills, they might try and colour in very neatly. If your kid is feeling joyful, they might cover the drawing with bright swirls. If they’re grumpy, they might scribble over it in black, or ignore the activity altogether. They might turn the paper over and draw a robot on the blank side; they might take the scissors and cut the paper into a thousand little bits; they might snip a fringe into the side of the sheet. Or they might ask to go for a walk. But you will never know if you don’t give them freedom.

This activity wasn’t a test. Your child won’t be getting into law school because their shoe was beautifully coloured in and cut out at the local library when they were three. In fact I suspect your efforts were counterproductive. Your kid learned some things today. They didn’t learn what colours they like; they didn’t find out what happens when they swirl colours together; they didn’t get to practice their fine motor skills; they didn’t make a choice about what they wanted to do, or how. But they learned to get with the program. They discovered that there is only one way to do an activity; they saw that it is best left to 40 year olds; they were taught to be an audience; and they were shown that they can’t be trusted with scissors.

If you want your kids to have any skills, let alone creativity, you need to let them do stuff. Kids have to do a thousand drawings and make a thousand cuts to learn how their fingers work and how paper and crayons and scissors interact. They need to try lots of things to work out what they like to do. It’s not just drawing and cutting. Kids need practice at everything. They need to spread too much butter on their bread and pour the milk to overflowing and put too much cereal in the bowl if they are going to learn to make their own breakfast. I’m tired of eight year olds coming to my house who can’t hold a butter knife or make their own sandwich. So let your kids do their own drawings. Let them make their breakfast and their lunch, put away the dishes, pack up the crayons, and be useful. Let them make messes and mistakes. They will thrive.

And so will you - because aren’t you bored? Aren’t you tired of making their lunch and clearing up their mess? Do you really want to spend your morning colouring in and cutting out, trying to make your kid interested in something that you yourself find tedious? Your three year old could make it interesting, if you let them. Left alone to colour and cut, they will do something you really don’t expect; often, it will be delightful.

Even better, they can pick up their toys and put them away; they can spread a sandwich; they make their own beds. They just need practice, which they will never get while you do everything for them. So let it all go, just let it all go. And if you do, and let your child work things out, you could sit in the library at the edge of the circle, and have a good chat with me.

(This story from today made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. Thanks to Brunswick Library storytime for introducing it to us all!)

Just being and birds in the local park

 

She asked to go to the park.

We’d dropped her sisters at school and were on our way home. Someone was coming for lunch. The floor needed vacuuming. The bathroom needed scrubbing. The washing needed hanging out. I wanted to make soup and deliver it to a friend. The day was cold and damp, and I’d forgotten my scarf. We were on the bike. I almost said no. But...

Fifteen minutes, I said. Fifteen minutes, then home.

And at the park we found six rainbow lorikeets, learning to fly. Hop, jump, flutter, flap; they bumbled back and forth. Up on a pole, and onto the roof of the play fort. Back to a branch, and whoops-a-daisy, a bird chose a twig too weak and was flopped upside down, raucously indignant as it hung. We stood in a patch of weak sunlight, entranced.

Like little children, the birds fell into a wrestling match. They tumbled over and over the grass, shrieking and beating their wings. Watching the whirlwind of bright feathers and squawks, we hollered and laughed.

Then up they flew for more flying practice. In a moment of quiet, she rested her head against my chest and listened. Kerthump kerthump, is that your heart? she asked, while the lorikeets flapped higher and higher, into the very treetops.

The birds were gone. She hugged me, then walked to the bike trailer and popped on her helmet.

Home now, she said.

To think I’d almost said no.

Response: Stuart Brown's Play

I have long noticed that when I am flat I become obsessed by Getting Things Done. The dishes, the floors and the dinners become important and difficult and time consuming and I find it hard to enjoy my children or anything else. The old adage suggests that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and a lack of play certainly makes me very dull indeed – but work and play are not, I find, in opposition. When I regularly engage in play, I work better and life goes rather more swimmingly. The jobs get done quickly, my kids are delightful, and I find the time to play even more. I recently read a book which, rather gratifyingly, supports my observations: Stuart Brown’s Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul suggests that the opposite of play is not work, but depression.

The triggers for depression, of course, are another thing. Our society’s frenzied and selfish pursuit of financial success and personal happiness is a major trigger; so are the self-help books which encourage these twin and very tedious foci, and Play toes the party line. According to the blurb, ‘our ability to play through life is the single most important factor in determining our success and happiness’, which suggests to me that Play is designed to be picked up at the airport and read on the plane by middle management. As a result, many claims in the book are justified by the suggestion that they might increase one’s marketability, profit margin and, of course, happiness – whatever that is.

It would irritate me more but for my many crappy experiences of work which suggest that middle management has much to learn about how to set up interesting, rewarding and effective workplaces, and if Play will help them with that task, then it has my blessing. In any case, being pitched at middle management makes it a quick and easy read. Meanwhile, those of us not in middle management who are willing to overlook the success-and-happiness formula (and a few gross generalisations, such as which are playful thus creative countries) will find many interesting and salutary points.

Brown has studied play for many decades, and this book outlines his understanding of the nature of play, its necessity to human health and development, and the benefits of a playful approach to the whole of one’s life. An activity not just for children, Brown defines play as a state of mind: ‘an absorbing, apparently purposeless activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of self-consciousness and sense of time’. Thus it might range from filling in the cryptic crossword to kicking a ball to going for an aimless wander. Play is vital because it is in this unconscious absorption we tune into the world and are freed from our limitations; and it provides an outlet for our deepest most creative selves.

As a result, Brown claims that people who play are more creative, energetic and insightful; they are better at solving problems and negotiating difficulties and conflicts; and they continue to grow intellectually and emotionally.

Of course this is good for the workplace, but it is also good for everything else, and Brown writes convincingly about the importance of play in child development, parenting, marriage and old age, as well as in education and vocational discernment. When so many of us are bogged down in the rat race, it is helpful to be reminded just how invigorating it can be to step out of the rut and play with one’s kids, one’s spouse, one’s friends, one’s neighbours, or even, shock horror, alone.

Brown does not specifically mention meditation, but as I read I found myself reflecting on the relationship between it and play. They are, to me, two sides of a coin, as good play, particularly solitary play, often precipitates in me a meditative stance. For example, letting the busy part of my mind wander through the cryptic crossword can provide the space for deeper insights than simple anagrams.

Much of what Brown says is common sense: of course your marriage is more interesting if you have a playful approach to it; of course playful people are better at solving problems. But sometimes common sense is not so obvious, and our natural desire to play is often suffocated by societal pressures to act ‘grown up’, as if being adult requires that one become stultifyingly dull. Therefore, despite my reservations about the success/happiness paradigm and my dislike of a few generalisations, I recommend Play to you, along with a good game of Scrabble, an evening of parlour games, or a thrilling round of hide and seek.

Eat Poop You Cat

 

I recently held a night of parlour games to celebrate my birthday. A dozen friends came over, drank too many bubbles, and laughed solidly for three hours. We started with Word and Question, a game I picked up from What Katy Did at School. Each person writes a word at the top of a sheet of paper, then folds it down and throws it in the pool; takes a slip from the pool, writes a question on it, folds it down and returns it to the pool; then draws from the pool again, opens the slip, and writes a poem which answers the question and uses the word on that slip. We moved on to Eat Poop You Cat, which is a written form of Chinese whispers alternating words and drawings; and finished up with a few rounds of the old classic, Dictionary.

As we played, we concentrated, argued, postured, threw out false lures, groaned, and laughed ourselves silly. It was a memorable night, something that will be repeated well before my next birthday.

 

I thought about that night as I watched Andrew Denton’s new show, Randling. Randling is a tournament of parlour games played by intelligent and funny people. I’m sure I’m supposed to love the show, but I felt it missed something. As I watched, I began to realise that parlour games are not about the games themselves. Instead, they are about participation. Watching other people play on the telly taught me nothing about my friends, nothing about myself. It didn’t connect me with anyone; it gave me no joint memories; it kept my mask intact.

Playing parlour games, as opposed to watching them, is a different story. Every person in the room puts themself on the line at some stage or another, and the rest of us get to learn that this person is a bluffer, is witty, is a natural poet.

Games open us up to each other, revealing glimpses of ourselves that we often keep under wraps. To play well, we must relinquish our dignity and enter into the world of make believe; playing can be scary, confronting – and very very funny.

At my games night, many of us there recalled another night we had played ten years earlier; we remembered the Dictionary words, and the cunning strategy of one particular friend. We were reminded that our lives have been linked together for more than a decade, and even although most of us have had children, moved suburbs and become hyper busy, we can still get together from time to time to share drinks, games and old jokes, picking up where we left off. No tv show comes close to this.

So the next time you’re thinking of watching Randling or anything else, I invite you to put down the remote and take a good look around. Is there someone in the house who’s up for a spot of scrabble, gin rummy or fan tan? Could a friend pop over for an hour once the kids are in bed and share a cuppa and a round of backgammon? Could you pull out a jigsaw in solitude and enjoy the meditative click as each piece falls into place?

It really doesn’t matter if you’re any good at games. What matters is that you’re willing to play, because if you really throw yourself into the game you might just find yourself experiencing fullness of life, that sacred state of being in which you are no longer audience member or consumer, a passive person to whom things happen. Instead, for a few precious minutes, you are deeply alive, a fully creative participant.

Worship, Work and Play

 

This piece appeared in The Sunday Age Faith column on the weekend.

***

Does everyone feel short of time? I do. If I clean the house then I'm not working in the garden; if I'm working in the garden, I'm not writing a word; if I'm writing, there are meals to cook; if I'm cooking, there is laundry to fold; if I'm folding, my kids need attention; and when's the last time I exercised? There are too many people to keep up with and chores to be done; too many school drop offs and pickups and kinder runs; too great a need for volunteers and hard workers that I cannot fill. When I let it, the sense of being pressed for time can feel overwhelming.

But what is time for? How should we use it?

In the Christian tradition, the answer is threefold. First, we are called to worship, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone. But worship doesn't happen in a vacuum; it is braided with two other aspects of life.

One is to work in whichever ways have been laid before us. Work may be paid, it may be voluntary; it may form a major part of our Christian identity or it may be our attitude that defines it as a faithful act: whatever it is, however we do it, most Christians know about work. Sadly, we often focus on it to the exclusion of the third strand, which is to play.

We don't hear much about this third strand; and when we do, it is often referred to as the deeply sober 'Sabbath rest'. In essence, however, it is an invitation to play, pure and simple. It's to engage in the restorative 'let's pretend' of a child or the challenge of a more formal game; it's the creative dance of a lively conversation. It's to have an afternoon nap and wake up still dreamy. It's to engage bodies, hearts and minds in the thrill of good sex and to lie around languidly afterwards. For in these moments, whether playing hide-and-seek with a child or chess with adult friends; whether drawing for pleasure or yarning with old mates or engaging in that most intimate of acts with someone we love, that we are so often called back to ourselves.

Gone are the puffed up pretences of the important person; gone is the illusion that we are indispensable. Gone too is the illusion that we are worthless. Instead, in loving relationships and contagious laughter, in creative acts and deep intimacy and the world of the child, we have the possibility of experiencing humility, vulnerability, openness and joy.

With this restoration, all the things we can or should do fade into insignificance, for we are no longer defined by our efforts. Instead, we may know ourselves and be known once again for who we really are, the cherished children of God.

(And if you've forgotten how to play, the following book is an excellent place to start! We use it several times a week, and much more during school holidays.)

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.

Under a Rock

 

Recently I was told I live under a rock. Here's a bit of doggerel in response.

***

Yes, it’s true. I live under a rock.
Shrink down to my size and join me for a while.
You might find old friends, long stories,
family secrets come to light,
A baby blowing bubbles, a crooked smile.
Neighbours reconciled, gifts given and received.
Quietly reading, a little child.
A kid on a bike, a kid up a tree.
The satisfaction of a pile of washing,
scented by the afternoon.
A toddler in a puddle, sloshing.

Under a leaf, small eggs hang.
The grapevine is now speckled red.
Mornings are crisp, autumn’s in the air.
‘The moon, the moon!’ my daughters said.
We came home late as it hung low
And dazzled us with its golden glow.

These are the things of everyday living:
kitchens and gardens and women and kids.
A life which is rich and generous and giving
– I wouldn’t trade any of it for quids!

Hide and seek

 

Sometimes I am too proud. My girls ask me to play hide and seek, and I demur. I'm too dignified to crawl under a bed; I'm too big to stuff my body into a cupboard; I'm too intelligent to pretend not to see them as they hide with one leg sticking out. Anyway, I have better things to do.

But they plead; and so I agree to play two or three quick rounds with haughty grace. I don't enter the game fully; I am pretending to play rather than actually playing. But as I pretend, something odd often happens. I wander into a room where I heard a floorboard squeak, and there is no child. I quickly check the usual places; still no child. My pulse quickens and my heart begins to race. 'Hello?' I ask tentatively into the quiet room. I check again, and perhaps then there is a muffled giggle. I look once more and finally see a small lump in a most unexpected place, hidden under a blanket. I tiptoe over, yank back the blanket, and a child bursts out; we shriek and laugh. Now it's my turn to hide.

Instead of going to one of my usual spots where I can stand quietly and check my text messages – in the pantry, behind the shower curtain, in the powder room – I race down the hall, sneak into the laundry, then set myself halfway up the stairs just out of sight; I creep onto an unmade bed and arrange the doonas over myself in a hot messy mound. With pounding heart I wait, stifling the urge to giggle nervously. When a child comes near, I hold my breath...

 

Still waiting...

 

then jump out yelling!

And suddenly I realise I am no longer pretending. Here I am, dignified old me, leaping and shouting and giggling like a five year old. I've shot from pretending to playing, just by going through the motions.

It makes me wonder what else I could master by going through the motions. By drafting small pieces day after day, could I learn to write? By acting like a faithful wife, could I plumb the depths of love? By pretending I have all the time in the world, could I acquire patience? By sitting in quietness and letting go of the voices, could I experience silence?

Could I soften my hard heart by pretending to be kind?

Advent List 2011

Preparations for Christmas are upon us. Sadly, most preparation rituals do not seem to have much to do with the coming of a bearded prophet who recalled to us the poor, the outcast, the refugee, the dispossessed, the imprisoned, the widow and the orphan. Instead, we are bombarded with tinny carols, silly plastic evergreen wreaths strung from the light poles as the Australian summer begins to sizzle, and exhortations to buy buy buy.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about developing some small non-commercial rituals for Christmas with my kids; and, as I am story crazy, they of course involved a pile of picture books. So then I put together a list of some of the books we will read during the four weeks leading up to Christmas; you can read the list here.

However, many of the books on the list are out of print and hard to get. Meanwhile, since then I have found lots more wonderful stories, so I have drawn up a new list, adding the new stories and letting go of some of the old.

These are not Santa stories. Nor are most of them explicitly Christmassy, let alone Christian. Instead, they are stories which honour and celebrate hope, joy, generosity, gratitude, sacrifice, community and love. In particular, several focus on welcoming the stranger into our midst, which has always been a central calling to both Jewish and Christian peoples and would seem particularly appropriate as some of us, at least, prepare to welcome in the form of a baby the most strange and wonderful human the world has ever seen – and a refugee, to boot.

***



So let’s start with that. Jane Kurtz has written a lovely book about immigrant children, In the Small, Small Night. Kofi and Abena have recently arrived in America, but Kofi is so worried that he will forget his family in Ghana that he cannot fall asleep. So his sister Abena, recalling the village storyteller so far away, recounts two traditional stories from home: Anansi and the pot of wisdom; and the turtle and the vulture. As Kofi listens to the stories, he is soothed back to sleep.

The story is told without a hint of mawkishness, yet it is very touching as these two young children, so far from home, talk about their fears and what they have left behind. What is just as moving is the way Abena has brought the gift of storytelling with her from Ghana. The wisdom contained in the stories will sustain them as they start at a new school, in a new culture, where everything is different.



Sean Tan’s The Arrival charts the journey of another immigrant. This book without words is for all ages, as the story is told through hundreds of eerie sepia-toned illustrations. The Arrival will raise all sorts of questions about why people flee and resettle, questions which may be extended to the Advent stories or to the refugees in our midst.



Nail Soup is a retelling of a traditional folk tale which reminds us to welcome in the stranger. A traveller, denied all but the meanest of shelter and sustenance, convinces his host that he will make soup out of a nail. As the 'soup' bubbles away, the host is gradually persuaded to add ingredients that turn it into a generous meal they can share, demonstrating that a little hospitality leads to a rich bounty for all.



Welcoming in the refugee and the traveller is all well and good, but we are also to care for the poor in our midst. In The Happy Prince, Jane Ray retells Oscar Wilde's tale in which the statue of a prince gives all it has – its ruby eyes, its gold leaf – to the city’s poor via an obliging swallow. Ray’s richly detailed illustrations add greatly to the story.



The Quiltmaker's Gift is similarly themed, as a fabulously wealthy and utterly miserable king yearns for the one thing he cannot have: a patchwork quilt from the famed quiltmaker, who gives her quilts only to the poor. The quiltmaker tells the king that she will only make him a quilt once he has given everything away, and he gradually learns that joy is found not in material objects, but in self-sacrifice and caring for others. The detailed illustrations, which include dozens of quilt squares themed to the story, are absorbing.



Thinking of self-sacrifice recalls The Mousehole Cat, a tale from Cornwall. When winter storms close the harbour and bring a Cornish fishing village to the brink of starvation, Old Tom and his cat Mowser find a way out and brave the wind and the waves to catch fish for the town, knowing that there is a good chance that they will never return.



Old Tom reasons that there is nobody left to grieve for him; it frees him to risk his life to feed others. In Amelia Ellicott's Garden, a more passive older person feels abandoned by Time. Amelia struggles to maintain her beautiful garden and longingly remembers when she had people to share it with. It is not until a great windstorm blows her garden, her chickens and even Amelia over the fence that she discovers the host of neighbours – from all over the world – living in the flats next door who long to share the garden, and their lives, with her.



Getting to know one’s neighbour, the first step to love, also features in Rose Meets Mr Wintergarten. In this lovely book by Bob Graham, a young girl moves into a new neighbourhood. When she loses her ball over the fence, her openness and her fairy cakes disarm the miserly neighbour who has terrified the area’s children for decades.



Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge is a good neighbour, too. He lives next door to an old people’s home and is particular friends with Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, who has four names just like him. Miss Nancy has lost her memory, and Wilfrid Gordon sets out to find it for her.



Margaret Wild’s Hop Little Hare is a simple story, also showing the love between the generations. It is not until Little Hare spies sheep nibbling at a curative boffle bush, which will ease his grandfather’s rheumatism, that he feels sufficiently motivated to hop!



A more complex gift giving between young and old features in the classic, Now One Foot, Now the Other. Bob teaches his grandson to stack blocks, tell stories and walk. When Bob has a stroke, it is the little boy who patiently teaches his grandfather to stack blocks, tell stories and walk again, using the same loving words his grandfather once used with him.



Love handed down between the generations is also found in Love You Forever, by Robert Munch, which he wrote in homage to his two children who were stillborn. In this story, a mother sings a special song to her son as he moves through the life stages; and as she ages and nears the end of her life, her son takes up the mantle and begins to sing it to his daughter.



Of course, we are called to love not just our family, our neighbour, the poor, the traveller, or the refugee; we are called to love our enemy, too. A Child's Garden tells of hope in oppressive circumstances. A boy tends a vine which throws out seeds on either side of a high barbed wire fence; the next season, vines grow on both sides of the fence and intertwine, symbolising hope for a future peace.



The story of the vine recalls, too, that we are to love the earth and everything in it. For All Creatures uses gliding alliterative language to describe and celebrate all manner of things that creep and crawl, run and jump, slither and slide upon the earth. ‘For spirals, shells and slowness, smallness and shyness, and for scribbled silver secrets, we are thankful.’



This celebration of the natural world is also seen in Owl Moon, in which a young girl goes out late one night with her father to see an owl. Owl Moon is a hauntingly beautiful children’s book, drenched in awe. An excellent book to read quietly at night, just before bedtime.



In Jeannie Baker’s Belonging, like so many of her books, we are shown one way to be partners in the creation: and outside our very own back window! Like The Arrival, it is told entirely in pictures, making it a book that people of all abilities can pore over.



Let’s finish with two books about Christmas. The first is a lively rendition of The Nativity by Julie Vivas. Drawing from the gospel writer Luke’s account, she illustrates the story in her singular style: the angel Gabriel is a ragged punk and shares a cuppa with Mary; the naked newborn, hands outstretched, is still attached to the umbilical cord; shepherds loom, peering into the cot; and in the final scene, Mary pegs out nappies. In Vivas's interpretation, the Christmas story is not a far-off super-spiritual event, but something immediate, physical and real, that happens even now. I particularly love that Mary is enormously pregnant, pendulous breasts and all, and not a skinny medieval nymph.



Finally, what would an Australian Christmas be without a reading of Wombat Divine? Wombat desperately wants to be in the Christmas play, but he is too short, too clumsy, and too heavy for any of the parts. At last, Emu finds him the perfect role and Wombat is, quite simply, divine.

As are all these stories. Read, prepare, enjoy.

Jones Park / Resurrection

 

When I first moved to Brunswick more than fifteen years ago, I lived in a share house backing onto a dingy oval. The oval was fenced on two sides by an old tip, a great sloping hill of dirt, rubble and weeds cordoned off by cyclone wire. On a third side crouched a shabby playground, but whenever I thought to go there for a meditative swing I felt so nervy and trapped that I left within minutes.

Now I live five blocks away, and it's one of my favourite places. Ten years ago, the council cleaned up the tip and turned it into green space. They refurbished the oval, took down the fences, and turned the two sites into one enormous park.

Let me take you on a tour. At the top of the hill is a platform. The oval and the old playground lie behind us. To the east roll hills, a hazy grey; to the south, city towers stretch up small and hopeful under the wide blue sky.

Heading down the gently winding path, you see groves of young trees. A mother and her baby picnic under the casuarinas, where the breeze flowing through the needles recalls the sound of the sea. To the left, a woman shoots hoops and you can hear the basketball chick! through the net, then thud to the ground.

Further down winds a dry creek bed. But turn towards the new playground, instead, with its concertina tyres; they wheeze notes when we jump on them. Hit the colourful mushrooms with the mallets; listen to them toll. Climb the spider web with me; at the top, hook in your feet and reach for the sky; the spider web gently sways. Below us, the creek bed curves into a large pond; let's run down the steps.

Lie on the boardwalk and peek over the edge. See the water beetles scoot through the reeds, wings flipping so fast they blur! See the tadpoles, with their translucent tails and the bulge of budding limbs! An aquatic ladybug, fat and red, bumbles and rolls on by.

Above us skitter large dragonflies, grey and fat like army helicopters; tiny dragonflies dance, blue as sapphires and impossibly slender. Every few minutes frogs start up, creaking like a hundred thumbs pulled across a hundred combs, then just as quickly fall silent again. Larger frogs add their deep popping bass notes; crickets rasp; the pond sings.

Rushes tower, ten feet tall; and behind them, the Serbian Orthodox Church soars, turrets ablaze with gold.

It will never be as it was two centuries ago, a place of untouched wilderness sloping up from the Merri Creek. But from town dump to this: a place where mothers and babies picnic in shady groves; joggers run puffing up the hill; kids shriek with laughter at the top of the spider web; men sprawl in the grass with books; women shoot hoops; couples nestle in quiet spots; and tucked right down in the far corner lie I, flat on my stomach and peering through the boardwalk at the golden light and watching and listening as the frogs and dragonflies and honeyeaters and wattlebirds and finches and lizards and beetles and countless other small creatures whose names I do not know get on with things -

Life has indeed returned to this part of the city.

Incidentally, in trying to learn about my local corner I discovered there are 324 known species of dragonfly in Australia! Who would have thought?!

Mortimer, Mohammed and Me

This piece appeared in Zadok Perspectives No. 111 (Winter 2011). The Spring edition is out now, with my reflection on praying into the night.

***

Mortimer, Mohammed and Me

Every Friday, I spend a few hours reading with kids at a local school. I listen to each child read their reader, and then I offer them a choice: they can go back to the classroom activity, or they can have a story read to them, which they choose from the books I bring in. Mostly, they want to listen to a story; and mostly, they choose a little book by Robert Munsch, called Mortimer.

Mortimer can’t sleep, so instead he sings loudly (‘Bang-bang, rattle-ding-bang, Gonna make my noise all day’) and drives his family crazy. Person after person comes upstairs to tell Mortimer to be quiet, but as soon as they reach the bottom of the stairs he starts singing again. Eventually, the family becomes so agitated that they start yelling at each other; and while Mortimer waits for someone else to come up, he falls fast asleep.

As you can imagine, it is a very loud book. I have to sing Mortimer’s song four times; and mimic the sound of lots of people coming upstairs and shouting at him; and evoke the noise of Mortimer’s mother and father and seventeen brothers and sisters and even the police yelling downstairs – this book is a riot.

Meanwhile the listening child sits, spellbound; sings Mortimer’s song along with me; and almost invariably gets the giggles.

I read Mortimer aloud fifteen to twenty times each week; and at times I find myself wanting to rush. They’ve all heard it before, many times. There are very few volunteers and lots of kids, and I would like to read with every child every week – but I can’t. I find myself thinking that if we hurry this story or read less of the reader or maybe even give up reading stories but focus on the readers instead, then I’ll get to one more, and one more, and one more, child.

Yet the whole point is to give these kids, mostly refugees with very few books at home, the opportunity to wallow in stories just as my own children have wallowed. We can’t do that in a rush.

So I work hard to breathe deep; to sit on the class list so it doesn’t catch my eye; to read fast when the story begs to be read fast; to read slow when the story begs to be drawn out; to make room for quiet spaces and expectant pauses; and to look at the face of each child and etch it onto my heart.

One Friday, I was reading Mortimer for perhaps the seventeenth time, as always achingly aware of the kids I wouldn’t get to and wrestling with the impulse to race. I glanced at Mohammed, listening with rapt attention, and I suddenly realised that we were on God’s time.

Between two words, I dropped into that great yawning space, that vast universe where there is more than enough time for love however long it takes; and in this spinning dizzying sense of the infinite I was surrounded by a great rumble of belly laughter, a deep chuckling, love wiping its eyes in hilarity at the story of Mortimer and at all the little boys and girls who drive their parents crazy, and at all the crazy adults who think that love can be scheduled or rushed.

And then I was back at school, where I found myself sitting on the carpet singing ‘Bang-bang, rattle-ding-bang, Gonna make my noise all day’ and beside me Mohammed was now singing, his face aglow, and I started to hoot and he got the giggles and a classmate joined in and another picked up the thread of song, and surrounding us all were the floating filaments, the echoes of heavenly laughter.

(The boy’s name has been changed. Robert Munsch has a fantastic website where you can look at his books and listen to stories; Mortimer is here.)