The kids are alright

There’s been a lot of bad press about teenagers and young adults of late, and I would like to rebut the argument that these ne’er-do-wells the media like to brand ‘Gen Y bother’ are a bunch of boozy, parent-bludging narcissists.

If my daughter’s peers are anything to go by our nation is in safe hands. These kids are politically aware, philosophically enlightened, caring, tolerant, intellectual and creative.

HSC results come out today. But do they really count in the big life picture?

No matter the score these kids will travel, have careers, invent things, slack off, fall in and out of love, solve problems, plant seeds, fuck up, make art and eventually become parents themselves just like, and probably more spectacularly, than any generation before them.

The worst thing about your kids growing up is not the parties, the obsessive attachment to technology, the lack of respect for authority or tradition; it is the realization that you need them more than they need you. 

Sistahood

I'm the red head

When I was growing up my siblings were my best friends. And being a middle child I had it good. My little bro provided escapism and adventure, outdoor games til sunset and someone to lord it over. He possessed a remarkable ability to make me laugh at the silliest things, and still does.

But when I wanted so badly to be grown up my big sister was the one I looked to. She was my staunch defender when schoolyard bullies threatened, my leading light academically and, I guess, a bit rad for the late 70’s. She was the dungaree-wearing, roll-your-own smoking, Ry Cooder-listening, scare the pants off Mum and Dad with a motorbike-riding boyfriend type of big sister and I idolised her. Perhaps for all the wrong reasons given that list of descriptives.

She was the one who sneaked me into my first under-age gig*. She was the one who convinced our parents to let her paint our bedroom teal green, including the ceiling. And she was the one who saw me through those angsty teenage and tough early twenty-something times without judgement. No wonder she was the one I wanted at the delivery of my first born and, 17 years later, at that child's high school graduation.

Today, nothing has changed. When I’m down or stressed I look to her for guidance, a shoulder to cry on, a laugh over a glass or three of wine or a spot of cleaning. Did I mention she’s a domestic goddess?

She was the rock when Mum was diagnosed with cancer, travelling miles weekly to attend appointments, decipher medical and legal jargon, provide companionship and ultimately nurse Mum in the final weeks. For that I owe her an unfathomable debt of gratitude.

Although we are chalk and cheese, in so many ways, the bond we share will never be broken. Happy Birthday Bec!

* it was Mental as Anything at the Manly Vale Hotel

Greensleeves

It's not summer yet (and mountain summers can be underwhelming) but the shrill of cicadas has got me feeling nostalgic...

In my childhood memories it is always hot.  Nothing ever moves quickly and even sounds are lazy and low.  It’s about summer and fibro.  Long weekends, blowflies and pink zinc.

About Dad wrangling the Victa through the backyard.  Purring, spluttering past the wading pool littered with jacaranda confetti.  Around the outlawed incinerator, then stalled, swearing and sweaty under the Hills hoist.

Me on a rusty swing, creaking to and fro, back and forth, bare toes tickling the buffalo grass.  Running back to the house trying to avoid the biting black ants.  Cool, lying flat out on the linoleum floor.

The radio’s murmuring that steady, reassuring rhythm of cricket.  And a whirring fan pushes warm air around the room.

Mum’s upside down.  I watch her walk into the kitchen, taking in her long legs first, then that spotty, lime green dress she made herself.  Even upside down she looks beautiful.

Dad’s in the kitchen now.  Big brown back, droplets of perspiration.  Flag ale – ah that’s better.  They smile.

It’s lunchtime.  Our legs stick to orange vinyl and my brother makes squeaky fart sounds with his.  We all giggle.  There’s tepid cordial and ham left over from Christmas.

Mum makes a salad with tins of Golden Circle pineapple rings and beetroot.  

After lunch my brother and I escape.  We put T-shirts on and rubber thongs, cause mum said to, and slip through the broken paling fence.

“G’day Bluey,” says Mr Farley ruffling my orange hair.  “Hello little man,” he says to my brother.  We grin.

Mr Farley takes photos.  He invites us inside.  Spooky and quiet in the dark red glow we watch as our mum appears, slowly, like a ghost floating in the developing tray.  I like the acrid smell of the chemicals.

“Don’t touch now,” Mr Farley warns but he’s not angry – he likes us.  He likes my mum too.

We come out into the glare and shield our eyes for a moment.  Waving goodbye to Mr Farley we return to our world on the other side of the fence.  Dad has the hose and a smile in his eyes.

We know what’s coming next and pretend to run away screaming as delicious spurts of water fall on backs, heads, legs.  Soon we are soaking.

Dad turns the hose off.  My brother goes inside and I go back to the swing.  Overhead grey-black clouds are creeping up on our Sunday.

The air becomes thick and sweet, heavy with the smell of rain not too far away.  There’s a distant rumble of thunder and for some reason I think about loneliness.

Then I hear something.

“Alas my love you do me wrong…”  The sad, melancholy tinkling of Greensleeves.

“Come and get an ice cream,” calls my brother from the back door.

We swing our legs on the banana lounge; happy, gripping sticky, drippy Mr Whippy ice-creams as fat drops of rain from the afternoon thunder storm splat on the concrete path.

Sky Burial

(a poem for Gary Tweddle)

For two days helicopters buzz the cliffs and ridges like metallic lammergeiers

Aiding and abetting the grisly retrieval work of the police ground crew.

Our very own Broadchurch unfolding on the pretty streets of a tourist town

The decomposed deceased, missing for six weeks, putting paid to delight in an early spring.

And yet here comes another unwitting victim, map and Mars bar in hand, gob-smacked by the sun-drenched sandstone edifice

Pondering misadventure in the depths of the Jamison valley.

Old school ties

At the end of September my first born will walk out her school gates for the last time (until a brief stint in the HSC exam rooms come Oct/Nov.) Sniff...pass the tissues please...

Remember leaving school and those mixed feelings of sadness, uncertainty, exhilaration and new found freedom?

Some kids can’t wait to get out into the big wide world and embrace adulthood, others would like to remain cocooned in the familiar routines and privileges of classrooms and adolescence.

It’s a long time ago now for me but I think I sat on the fence – loved not having to get up early, do homework and wear a uniform but hated the lack of opportunity a poor HSC result and geographical isolation dished out in spades.

But being a glass half full sort of gal I got myself out of those doldrums and have survived to this very day proving that school exam scores and report cards certainly don’t define you.

Although I think dear old Miss Timmins had a fair go at it in class 4.

Disgraceful Ageing

I am unapologetically middle-aged. And although 48 may be the new 12 I think it is time I started acting my age. But what does that mean?

I like gardening and punk music. I wear skinny jeans and drive a station wagon. I love food, wine, theatre and staying in on Friday night. I may have a mortgage but it doesn’t mean I understand it. I still feel the same as I did 25 or 30 years ago, it’s just that the crow’s feet and tuck-shop arms give me away.

So I guess I’ll go on badly dyeing my hair, listening to Triple J, loving John Green novels and dressing inappropriately til the day I die. The last thing I want to do is have a mid-life crisis and discover tantric sex or turn vegan or join a cult or become a crazy cat lady.

I read an article about how middle-aged women feel invisible in today’s youth-worshipping society and frankly that’s fine by me. Ever since the shiny new megamart replaced my local corner shop I feel that if I haven’t had a manicure, a facial and a nose job before I go out to buy milk I’ll be committing social suicide, because invariably as I’m wandering the aisles vaguely, in my slippers and daggy old pilled jumper, without a shopping list wondering what the hell I came in for I’ll bump into my daughter’s favourite school teacher, the local member for parliament, my sadistic ex-boss, the kid who works in the video store where I still haven’t paid the overdue fine for Eat, Pray, Love and the bloke who fixes my car. Eventually, after I hide in the frozen fish section to avoid the militant wing of the P&C, I’ll end up buying 24 rolls of toilet paper (because they are on special) and I'll forget the milk.

My dad, who is 81, is reading The Hunger Games trilogy. He loves Katniss, Peeta and all the crew. It takes him back to the Depression days when hunting small wildlife and bush survival skills were the norm (not sure about murdering other kids). Only problem is he’s still waiting for the third book to be released. 

He has a saying which I like: “there’s no future in growing old”.

The Crying House

Recently I commiserated with a friend who was packing up her family home as it had been sold. (Cue audible sigh) It’s always hard moving house, physically it’s a nightmare and emotionally it’s just plain tough. So many memories, not all of them good, but all of them particular to the lives that are played out within those walls.

It didn’t help my friend that it rained for an entire week during the packing and detaching process. 

I was reminded of an art installation I saw last year as part of Sydney’s Art and About festival.  The installation, called I Wish You Hadn’t Asked by James Dive from The Glue Society creative collective, was a fully furnished house, erected in the middle of city, that rained on the inside.

For two weeks, furniture, bedding, appliances, toys, artworks, books and clothing deteriorated as 200 litres of recycled water rained down on them – gradually destroying this little time capsule of family life; symbolising a relationship falling apart.

To experience the installation you donned a raincoat and entered through the front door. At the time I visited it had been raining on the inside for over a week. I found the surreal Dali-esque scene of molten belongings - the ruined trappings of a familiar life - and the stench of decay extremely confronting. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough; tears streaming down my face by the time I exited the back door.

Of the project, artist James Dive said: “From the outside everything looks normal – it is only once we go beyond the exterior normalities that we become witness to a private world slowly destroying itself. As the water continues to rain down, and as your shoes fill up, we gain empathy for a private world which time cannot mend.”

I know it's not material possessions that define "home" but after the boxes are filled, and you’ve dealt with the dust bunnies that remain when the furniture is removed, somehow an empty house doesn’t feel like home any more. It took my lot six months to come to terms with our latest move. (Or was it just me?) Eventually we stopped calling it “that house” and now we belong (albeit in a state of flux for the last year - see Cabin Fever), the sounds and smells and chaos of family life - arguments and laughter - filling the spaces up.

Offspring

I may sometimes allude to the fact that I share my life with children. And while they fill my world with joy I don’t want to harp on about them. I can’t imagine growing up in the digital age and having every little success or failure plastered all over the interweb by my loving mom. Thankfully, back in the day mothers were way too busy to engage in banal status updates and children were seen more as a duty than inspirational blog fodder.

It’s not that I don’t cherish them it’s just that I don’t want to be typecast as a mummy blogger and alienate the demographic that choose to steer clear of the mental, physical and fiscal cliff towards which offspring seem determined to drive their parents. I have born and bred two daughters – no biggie – they are long out of nappies anyway so I’ll let them make their own online faux pas. But did I mention they are incredibly intelligent, gorgeous human beings?

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Carl Honore, author of Under Pressure – How the epidemic of hyper-parenting is endangering childhood. Carl has some sage advice for would be tiger-mums about letting children just be children. (Cue the beautiful Jonsi.) It's all about the slow movement which includes education. Slow education lets children explore via an emergent curriculum that is lateral not linear. And slow schools don’t hothouse or teach to exams - I’m looking at you NAPLAN!

So I’ve decided to take a more hands-off approach to parenting. I’ve always encouraged individuality in my daughters – not that they needed it – and given them freedoms that some parents may feel unwise, but I feel they need to be able to think for themselves and learn from mistakes. Of course they know they can always call home and although it sounds counterintuitive, (my new favourite word), like slow education, hopefully a bit of freedom will help establish sound boundaries for learning and growth.

Blindsided

At a routine eye check-up (I’ll qualify routine later) I was told that I was legally blind in my right eye. Immediately my devious mind thought of any benefit I could claim - financial or otherwise – then the reality of the diagnosis began to sink in. Can I keep my driver’s license? Wow I’ve only got one eye left? Blindness is such a freaky thing for sighted people to imagine. I remember as a kid playing that party game pin the tail on the donkey and how we laughed at the near misses and hilarious places we’d stuck the tail.

Doesn’t seem so funny now.

My eyes are what you might call my Achilles heel. When I was in kindergarten, circa 1970, a routine school check up found I had myopia (short-sightedness) and a lazy eye with a slight turn – just for effect. For a year after that I wore glasses with a patch on one lens to try to strengthen the lazy eye. It’s called occlusion therapy. The cat-eye glasses had cream frames and the patch bore a Disney Bambi motif. Remember that kid at school with the patch? That was me. And though I can’t remember the taunts of ‘Cyclops’ it did make me look at the world differently. Besides, being a ginger I was no stranger to name-calling.

The best part about the diagnosis was that I got to go to a specialist in the city every month for eye exercises. This meant a day off school YES!, lunch at the Grace Bros. (now Myer) cafeteria - chocolate milkshake and a cheese sandwich, and one on one time with Mum.

Years later another diagnosis of congenital cataracts saw me in surgery – a routine procedure for octogenarians but not 20-somethings. But maybe my biggest fail optically was when I detached my own retina chopping wood. I’m too ashamed to go into detail but yes it did hurt and no I don’t fancy myself as a lumberjack anymore.

So here I am contemplating another ‘procedure’ to remove the rubber band that has been holding my retina in place since that fateful axe wielding day and that makes my kids look at me suspiciously when they see a glimpse of silicon in the corner of my eye (they think I’m some sort of Replicant), and trying not to consider the possibility of sympathetic opthalmia. 

Get real

As a rule I don’t watch reality TV – I can’t stand the squirming embarrassment I feel for each and every participant as they try to engender love (but more frequently loathing) through the various traumas and triumphs that take place during their sordid little 15 minutes of fame.

But lately I’ve found it useful.

It has become a way of connecting with my pubescent daughter before she plummets into the abyss of teenage angst and shuts me out completely. We can connect over America’s Next Top Model, The Voice, The Block, Four Weddings and possibly most distressingly Dance Moms. I draw the line at Wife Swap.

And while we don’t always see eye to eye on the content or contestants, at least it opens a dialogue about touchy issues like body image, self esteem, etiquette and most importantly – hair and clothes.

I only hope she doesn’t aspire to appear in a reality tv show or worse still, start living vicariously through these dunderheads.

All the shows are pretty much the same and attract a similar bunch of narcissists who willingly subject themselves to a series of often particularly cruel humiliations in their quest to win, win, WIN. Petulant behaviour, screaming and tears are par for the course. It’s all great fun until someone gets hurt.

And maybe that's the lesson we take from 'reality' tv - real life isn't a competition.

"Ideas are overrated"

So said the brooding badlander Mr Nick Cave in a recent interview. I reckon he’s had a few so I listened up. He qualified it with this: It is the hard work behind ideas to make them happen that is important or something like that.

And I agree.

Ideas are never a problem for me. They come thick and fast, usually around 3am when my brain is awash with anxiety reliving the preceding day’s events and expected outcomes of the next 24 hours. Storylines, business ventures, problem solving techniques all filter through the insomnia. But by the cold light of day those nuggets of genius pale in comparison to the deeds of the real movers and shakers of this world. Because it’s not the thinkers, dreamers or list makers (a group to which sadly I am a card carrying member) that win my admiration but the doers - the activists and volunteers, the entrepreneurs, scientists and community workers.

And so this post is dedicated to the Live Below the Line challenge participants (including my socially conscious teenager). A great idea that not only raises much needed funds for the poverty stricken but teaches a valuable life lesson in empathy.

If you would like to sponsor said socially conscious teen please click here.

Four funerals and a wedding

Not long after the flowers began to fade and list in their permamoist foam containers she began to notice things. Like shafts of light through summer mist after thunderstorms. Or the way the bowerbirds descended on her garden in fleeting olive-green drifts, cocking their hen-like heads, ever alert for the signalling call of the handsome blue-black fellow with his penchant for azure pegs and drinking straws. Maybe it was the bottled-up emotion curled like watchful cats inside her chest. Maybe it was the dreams that woke her with a start in the deep dark of night. But she noticed that the world was lighter and quieter. And she was set adrift in it – reeling and anchorless.

I never realised that losing my mum would make me feel so alone. So insecure. I feel it most keenly as the seasons change, as my girls grow, and our home renovation takes one more step towards completion -  things we will never share. Agonisingly, I feel it in my father's hollow voice down the telephone line.

I’ve been to four family funerals in four years. Each one different and yet the same. So inadequate the send-off for such intricate beings. And such an unfillable person-shaped hole in the universe when they are gone.

Perhaps we need death to make us take stock and dare to ponder mortality.

And then there is always joy. Birth, music, beauty and a perfect day.

That syncing feeling

After succumbing to smart phone envy at work I decided it was time to get one myself. The kid in the phone store was very considerate, gently guiding me through the purchase, correctly assuming I was a first time user. Slowly, I have grown fond of my phone. It’s very pretty, with bright lights and all the bells and whistles. I can see what the weather’s like in Istanbul, record voice memos a la Agent Cooper (“Diane it’s 9am and I’m heading out for coffee and a slice of pie”), take new photos then download apps to make them look old, access recipes so I'm never all lost in the supermarket when it comes time to make dinner and pinpoint my exact location on mobile satnav for when I do get lost in the supermarket and can't remember where I parked my car. Oh wait, that still won't help me find my car but it is quite fun. When I plug my phone into my computer it synchronizes my life with little whirling cyber dervishes. But while I’m not a total Luddite I am afraid this and other tech gadgets fail to get my heart racing. 

Call me old fashioned but I like the feel of books, the smell of stationers and second hand shops, the thrill of receiving snail mail (that isn't a bill) and the possibilities of a new black pen. Likewise, when it comes to social media I'm a late adopter. Facebook and twitter leave me cold. It's all too immediate and bolshie, with too much margin for error, ill-conceived opinion and hastily cobbled together sentences laden with typos and bad grammar. IMHO - to use the vernacular. Never mind the gratuitous product placement. I like the safety net of editing.That’s why I chose this little blog by which to whisper to the world. (I'm ok if no one is listening.) And though I have every intention of penning witty weekly posts, reality is that unlike Kim Jong-un I'm  hesitant to push the (Publish) button. Besides, I'm not sure I've got a handle on the technology. So bear with me while I read the manual to see how it all works. Failing that I’ll contact the nearest teenager – oh look here comes one now...

PS: What is it with followers? Sounds like some doomsday cult of zombie-like religious zealots. Either that or a bunch of lemmings.

I had an enlarged spleen when I was a child. Not sure what that meant but mum was worried enough to take me to the local GP where two nurses wrestled my flailing limbs into submission while the doctor tried to find a vein from which to extract a blood sample.

Seems I recovered, but the spleen has always held a morbid fascination for me. The word has a Shakespearean quality. A medieval tone.

I’m told you can vent it.

And, like the appendix, apparently humans can live without this dubious non-vital organ. It’s like the Allen key or set of screws you find in the Ikea packaging after you’ve already assembled the Flintorp. May have been useful but not essential.

A bit like this blog.