I'm off to the San Francisco tomorrow morning, and then to Mexico! I'm excited, nervous and terrified that I'll forget something important all at once. Can't quite believe it's happening. And far, far too tired and strung out to attempt to say anything witty or insightful about it all. (Redcap, how did you do it? I'm impressed.)
I plan to blog soon. That is, if my newly installed wireless is working ...
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Why the kiddies should read
Overheard on the train today: noon-ish, City Loop, on the Cranbourne line.
This conversation was punctuated by these two teenage girls (probably fifteen or sixteen) fixing their make-up, peering into a hand-mirror and adjusting their matching Alice bands, almost buried beneath mounds of teased hair.
'It's something to do all day, anyway.'
'Yeah, what else am I going to do, sit around the house and read?'
'I never read.'
'Me too. Mum is always like "why don't you read a book?" and I'm like "yeah, right. Tell me how boring it was when you're done."'
'Omigod! My mum says that, too. As if!'
***
'So, what's the difference between Christian and Catholic?'
'Well, if you're Christian you believe in God. And if you're Catholic you go to Mass and stuff. If you're Christian, you don't have to go to church.'
'Really?'
'Yeah. And if you're Catholic, you don't have to believe in God.'
'Is that right?'
'Actually, I don't know.'
'So, which are you?'
'I'm Catholic. But I don't go to church.'
'Oh. Right. Okay.'
***
'Have you heard of people getting eyelash extensions? Can you get them?'
'I don't know.'
'Because I really want my eyelashes extensioned.'
***
'Can you imagine going to the city by yourself?'
'To go to TAFE?'
'Yeah.'
'Yeah, I know. I'd be so scared.'
'Yeah, what if you got off at the wrong stop? I bet I would. I bet I'd get lost.'
'Yeah. But after a while you'd get used to it, I reckon.'
'Yeah. I s'pose.'
This conversation was punctuated by these two teenage girls (probably fifteen or sixteen) fixing their make-up, peering into a hand-mirror and adjusting their matching Alice bands, almost buried beneath mounds of teased hair.
'It's something to do all day, anyway.'
'Yeah, what else am I going to do, sit around the house and read?'
'I never read.'
'Me too. Mum is always like "why don't you read a book?" and I'm like "yeah, right. Tell me how boring it was when you're done."'
'Omigod! My mum says that, too. As if!'
***
'So, what's the difference between Christian and Catholic?'
'Well, if you're Christian you believe in God. And if you're Catholic you go to Mass and stuff. If you're Christian, you don't have to go to church.'
'Really?'
'Yeah. And if you're Catholic, you don't have to believe in God.'
'Is that right?'
'Actually, I don't know.'
'So, which are you?'
'I'm Catholic. But I don't go to church.'
'Oh. Right. Okay.'
***
'Have you heard of people getting eyelash extensions? Can you get them?'
'I don't know.'
'Because I really want my eyelashes extensioned.'
***
'Can you imagine going to the city by yourself?'
'To go to TAFE?'
'Yeah.'
'Yeah, I know. I'd be so scared.'
'Yeah, what if you got off at the wrong stop? I bet I would. I bet I'd get lost.'
'Yeah. But after a while you'd get used to it, I reckon.'
'Yeah. I s'pose.'
Monday, February 05, 2007
The Curious Incident of the F***king Annoying Dogs in the Night-Time
From my Adelaide notebook
It’s a beautiful summer evening in leafy St Peters. The sharp heat of the day is fading along with the sunlight, smudging into something altogether more soothing. On one of the Avenues, in what my sister L dubs ‘the worst house on the best street’, it’s bedtime for boys. (And a girl.)
F has had his story and is sprawled under the fan on my sister S’s bed. He is restless, as usual. He calls for a drink. He announces a competition for my sisters and I, shouting from the bedroom. He is sternly put in his place. My sister L emerges from the bathroom fresh from the shower, in a tank top and silk underwear. She, too, is going to bed. She starts work early tomorrow.
S and I settle in the lounge room. The door to the balcony is open and a gentle breeze makes the air conditioner unnecessary. We talk about nothing much. Beyond the balcony, the street stretches into generous blocks, each roughly the size of my sisters’ apartment building, each hosting equally generous homes and gardens, nestled behind long driveways and tall fences. On one of those driveways, behind one locked gate, a high-pitched chorus of barks pierces the evening. It soon escalates from white noise to nails-on-a-blackboard annoying.
L appears in the kitchen with an empty glass.
‘I’m going to go over there and say something soon’ she moans. ‘This has been going on EVERY NIGHT since we moved in.’
All day, my sisters tell me, the dogs are neither seen nor heard, presumably kept inside the house. As evening falls, they are released into the gated front yard where they freely exercise their lungs long into the night.
In S’s bedroom, F has been spied holding his head and groaning, addressing complaints to the dogs outside his (necessarily) open window.
‘They need a bucket of water tipped on them’ I growl. (It works with my dogs.)
S snaps her head up from her computer screen. She is browsing uni subjects as we chat.
‘Well, I dare you to do it.’
‘Okay.’
I don’t care; I don’t live here. And even though my own dogs at home are pretty f***king annoying, I’m frustrated and looking for a release.
‘I’ll get the bucket! Can I film you from the balcony with my camera phone?’
‘Sure.’
She disappears in search of the bucket and I pad towards the outside door, through the kitchen. The bells on my sandals tinkle in time with my steps. I kick them off and slide into S’s thongs, under the coffee table. I wonder whether to change out of my white dress, then decide I’m taking this espionage thing too far.
S is in L’s room. I glimpse the television blinking from a gap in the doorway and follow her in. S is doubled over. L is shaking her head. She laughs, too, but vetoes the plan.
‘NO!’ she says. ‘We should knock on their door and ask them to do something about the dogs first. THEN, if they don’t so anything or they’re not home, THEN you can throw the bucket of water.’
‘Okay’ I agree. ‘Sounds fair.’
S is disappointed.
L crawls out of bed and shrugs a jacket over her singlet. For a moment, she stands there in her jacket and underwear, as if ready.
‘Shouldn’t you wear some pants?’ S collapse into giggles.
L finds a pair of tracksuit pants on the floor and pulls them on, making a face at her.
‘I was going to.’
‘I would have thought of pants first.’
The three of us stand giggling in the doorway. It’s fun to be silly like this with my sisters, all three of us regressing to childhood in each other’s company.
L and I descend the stairs of the apartment block as S runs for the balcony. The barks become sharper, more highly pitched, as we approach. As L and I draw near, the dogs become more frenzied, throwing themselves against the gate in an effort to get at us.
Across the road, we hear S call to F and F reply, as clearly as if we were in the apartment with them. We look at each other.
‘What if they heard us?’ whispers L.
‘Saying we’ll throw water on their dogs!’
Hysteria again.
We stand at the gate and stare helplessly at the lit front window. We can’t possibly get beyond the dogs to knock on the door.
‘I’ll leave a note in the letterbox’ sighs L, turning to go.
I lean in close to the dogs.
‘BAH!’ I growl. It’s how our very expensive (and generally useless) dog trainer taught us to discipline our dogs. These dogs react angrily.
‘That’s IT!’ hisses L. ‘I’m calling the police. What’s the street number here?’
She peers at the letterbox through the descending dark, which has almost completely taken over.
I lean close to the gate again, bending almost to the dogs’ level. I glance up across the manicured expanse of (curiously green) lawn.
Then, without knowing why I'm doing it, I growl at the dogs. A low, deep, guttural growl. A dog’s growl.
The dogs blink back at me: stunned, confused. Silent.
L and I scurry back across the road and up the stairs, waving at S on the balcony. We hold onto each other as we run, trying to suppress our giggles. When we tumble into the kitchen, S is there to meet us.
Outside, the air is still and the night silent but for the trill of crickets, suddenly audible. The dogs have stopped. I have stopped them with my growl.
‘I guess I don’t need to call the police’ says L.
‘Oh, and you don’t need the bucket either’ says S, a little sadly.
We all stand in the lounge room, listening. Minutes pass. Nothing.
‘You said BAH to those dogs!’ yells F. ‘I heard you! And they’ve stopped!’
‘I growled at them, too’ I tell him, coming to his doorway.
‘Wow. Go Mum!’
L returns to bed promising to no one in particular that she WILL call the police if they start up again.
S and I settle peacefully back on the couch.
‘You do realise that I’ll be a hero in your neighbourhood?’
‘Nah’ she says. ‘When you’re gone, I’ll take the credit.’
The dogs bark twice more, for seconds-long bursts, over the rest of the night.
I must remember to try THAT trick with our dogs at home.
It’s a beautiful summer evening in leafy St Peters. The sharp heat of the day is fading along with the sunlight, smudging into something altogether more soothing. On one of the Avenues, in what my sister L dubs ‘the worst house on the best street’, it’s bedtime for boys. (And a girl.)
F has had his story and is sprawled under the fan on my sister S’s bed. He is restless, as usual. He calls for a drink. He announces a competition for my sisters and I, shouting from the bedroom. He is sternly put in his place. My sister L emerges from the bathroom fresh from the shower, in a tank top and silk underwear. She, too, is going to bed. She starts work early tomorrow.
S and I settle in the lounge room. The door to the balcony is open and a gentle breeze makes the air conditioner unnecessary. We talk about nothing much. Beyond the balcony, the street stretches into generous blocks, each roughly the size of my sisters’ apartment building, each hosting equally generous homes and gardens, nestled behind long driveways and tall fences. On one of those driveways, behind one locked gate, a high-pitched chorus of barks pierces the evening. It soon escalates from white noise to nails-on-a-blackboard annoying.
L appears in the kitchen with an empty glass.
‘I’m going to go over there and say something soon’ she moans. ‘This has been going on EVERY NIGHT since we moved in.’
All day, my sisters tell me, the dogs are neither seen nor heard, presumably kept inside the house. As evening falls, they are released into the gated front yard where they freely exercise their lungs long into the night.
In S’s bedroom, F has been spied holding his head and groaning, addressing complaints to the dogs outside his (necessarily) open window.
‘They need a bucket of water tipped on them’ I growl. (It works with my dogs.)
S snaps her head up from her computer screen. She is browsing uni subjects as we chat.
‘Well, I dare you to do it.’
‘Okay.’
I don’t care; I don’t live here. And even though my own dogs at home are pretty f***king annoying, I’m frustrated and looking for a release.
‘I’ll get the bucket! Can I film you from the balcony with my camera phone?’
‘Sure.’
She disappears in search of the bucket and I pad towards the outside door, through the kitchen. The bells on my sandals tinkle in time with my steps. I kick them off and slide into S’s thongs, under the coffee table. I wonder whether to change out of my white dress, then decide I’m taking this espionage thing too far.
S is in L’s room. I glimpse the television blinking from a gap in the doorway and follow her in. S is doubled over. L is shaking her head. She laughs, too, but vetoes the plan.
‘NO!’ she says. ‘We should knock on their door and ask them to do something about the dogs first. THEN, if they don’t so anything or they’re not home, THEN you can throw the bucket of water.’
‘Okay’ I agree. ‘Sounds fair.’
S is disappointed.
L crawls out of bed and shrugs a jacket over her singlet. For a moment, she stands there in her jacket and underwear, as if ready.
‘Shouldn’t you wear some pants?’ S collapse into giggles.
L finds a pair of tracksuit pants on the floor and pulls them on, making a face at her.
‘I was going to.’
‘I would have thought of pants first.’
The three of us stand giggling in the doorway. It’s fun to be silly like this with my sisters, all three of us regressing to childhood in each other’s company.
L and I descend the stairs of the apartment block as S runs for the balcony. The barks become sharper, more highly pitched, as we approach. As L and I draw near, the dogs become more frenzied, throwing themselves against the gate in an effort to get at us.
Across the road, we hear S call to F and F reply, as clearly as if we were in the apartment with them. We look at each other.
‘What if they heard us?’ whispers L.
‘Saying we’ll throw water on their dogs!’
Hysteria again.
We stand at the gate and stare helplessly at the lit front window. We can’t possibly get beyond the dogs to knock on the door.
‘I’ll leave a note in the letterbox’ sighs L, turning to go.
I lean in close to the dogs.
‘BAH!’ I growl. It’s how our very expensive (and generally useless) dog trainer taught us to discipline our dogs. These dogs react angrily.
‘That’s IT!’ hisses L. ‘I’m calling the police. What’s the street number here?’
She peers at the letterbox through the descending dark, which has almost completely taken over.
I lean close to the gate again, bending almost to the dogs’ level. I glance up across the manicured expanse of (curiously green) lawn.
Then, without knowing why I'm doing it, I growl at the dogs. A low, deep, guttural growl. A dog’s growl.
The dogs blink back at me: stunned, confused. Silent.
L and I scurry back across the road and up the stairs, waving at S on the balcony. We hold onto each other as we run, trying to suppress our giggles. When we tumble into the kitchen, S is there to meet us.
Outside, the air is still and the night silent but for the trill of crickets, suddenly audible. The dogs have stopped. I have stopped them with my growl.
‘I guess I don’t need to call the police’ says L.
‘Oh, and you don’t need the bucket either’ says S, a little sadly.
We all stand in the lounge room, listening. Minutes pass. Nothing.
‘You said BAH to those dogs!’ yells F. ‘I heard you! And they’ve stopped!’
‘I growled at them, too’ I tell him, coming to his doorway.
‘Wow. Go Mum!’
L returns to bed promising to no one in particular that she WILL call the police if they start up again.
S and I settle peacefully back on the couch.
‘You do realise that I’ll be a hero in your neighbourhood?’
‘Nah’ she says. ‘When you’re gone, I’ll take the credit.’
The dogs bark twice more, for seconds-long bursts, over the rest of the night.
I must remember to try THAT trick with our dogs at home.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Too cool for school
The playground is a bit like high school. Scratch that: a lot like high school. And in the sea of cliques, this ten-years-younger-than-the-others, no mortgage, shared parenting mum is somewhat of a loner. A bit like I was in high school, really.
Which is why I was so incredibly chuffed that I spent half of Thursday in really interesting conversation with two mums from school. J's daughter was in F's class in prep, and we've actually quite liked each other since we discovered a shared passion for Idol back then, but barely spoken in the past year, as our kids have been in different classes (still are). We got chatting in the schoolyard post-drop-off today and ended up moving to a bench in the quadrangle, where we gossipped and giggled like, well, schoolgirls for about an hour.
This is when M scuttled breathlessly across the yard to join us, emoting about being a bad mother because she'd forgotten her kid L's lunch and had just dropped it in. We laughed and told her some of our own Dumb Mum stories and told her she was a good mum for coming back with it.
The long-overdue sense of kinship with other parents really kicked in, though, when we started talking about last year’s school performance – particularly the item that caused me to write an angry letter to the school, the Year Ones’ performance of Aqua’s Barbie Girl. I’ve never really spoken about this to other parents at the school, mostly because no one else seemed to be bothered by it, so I was delighted to hear that both J and M had found it incredibly disturbing. What was even more fascinating though, was that M’s son had been in that class. M talked about dreading the school concert after seeing the lyrics that came home and the suggestive choreography that accompanied it, and really, really not wanting to see her son perform the song. She said that she knew a couple of other parents in that class had felt the same way.
What’s more, she told me some other things she’s witnessed with this particular teacher, who I’ll call Bogan Princess. Things that made me both pleased that I’d complained about her (in the context of the performance) and justified in my decision that I would rather pull F out of school than ever have her teach him.
Which is why I was so incredibly chuffed that I spent half of Thursday in really interesting conversation with two mums from school. J's daughter was in F's class in prep, and we've actually quite liked each other since we discovered a shared passion for Idol back then, but barely spoken in the past year, as our kids have been in different classes (still are). We got chatting in the schoolyard post-drop-off today and ended up moving to a bench in the quadrangle, where we gossipped and giggled like, well, schoolgirls for about an hour.
This is when M scuttled breathlessly across the yard to join us, emoting about being a bad mother because she'd forgotten her kid L's lunch and had just dropped it in. We laughed and told her some of our own Dumb Mum stories and told her she was a good mum for coming back with it.
The long-overdue sense of kinship with other parents really kicked in, though, when we started talking about last year’s school performance – particularly the item that caused me to write an angry letter to the school, the Year Ones’ performance of Aqua’s Barbie Girl. I’ve never really spoken about this to other parents at the school, mostly because no one else seemed to be bothered by it, so I was delighted to hear that both J and M had found it incredibly disturbing. What was even more fascinating though, was that M’s son had been in that class. M talked about dreading the school concert after seeing the lyrics that came home and the suggestive choreography that accompanied it, and really, really not wanting to see her son perform the song. She said that she knew a couple of other parents in that class had felt the same way.
What’s more, she told me some other things she’s witnessed with this particular teacher, who I’ll call Bogan Princess. Things that made me both pleased that I’d complained about her (in the context of the performance) and justified in my decision that I would rather pull F out of school than ever have her teach him.
1. Bogan Princess was in the habit of breezing into class (of Year One children, remember) and asking stimulating and highly age-appropriate educational questions like: ‘SO! Who knows who got killed on Home and Away last night?’
2. Bogan Princess had a tape recorder in the classroom and would often put on pop songs (yes, along the lines of Aqua’s Barbie Girl) and invite the kids to get up and dance. An emerging clique of princesses-in-training would leap up and push to the front, swaying and shimmying to the music, swivelling their little hips. The shyer kids – and most of the boys – would either sit, embarrassed, or half-heartedly wiggle along so as not to be left out.
3. One day, M’s boy L, a sensitive soul, came home quite distressed. That day, a boy called T had been misbehaving in class. So Bogan Princess asked the class: ‘Who doesn’t want T to be in our classroom anymore?’ and called for a show of hands. The boy was voted out and banished, on the basis that his classmates didn’t want him. ‘What did you do?’ asked M. ‘I put up my hand’ said L, ‘I didn’t want to, but I thought I’d better.’ L felt deeply ashamed and upset because he’d been part of ostracising this kid. Apparently, other children had come home that night with similar stories.
4. At the first parent/teacher interview night, Bogan Princess began her interview with M as follows: ‘You know, these last few weeks have been really hard for me. I’ve had parents complaining all the time and I’ve been coming home in tears almost every night. It’s been really hard fitting in and I’m just learning.’ M was a parent who had complained a couple of times. She
apologised, and didn’t complain again. ‘I felt like saying,’ she told us, ‘that L had been coming home upset at night too.’ Because it’s all about the teachers, isn’t it? It’s sooo professional to begin a client/service provider meeting by the service provider telling that client in advance that complaints make them cry and that they’re just learning. That would, in other professional situation, get a person sacked. Or at least disciplined.
Bogan Princess is playing dollies with these kids. She is teaching them how to form cliques, how to be cool, how it’s important to like the right things in order to chat about them at school the next day, and how important it is to be part of the crowd. Don’t be yourself, be like everyone else and fit in.
Oh, and half the stuff she’s using as reference points is TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE FOR YEAR ONE KIDS.
M and J did remind me about one aspect of Bogan Princess’s concert item that I’d HATED at the time, but overlooked in the face of the bigger evil of the sexualised lyrics and dance routine. It was a ‘time warp’ theme, and when each decade rolled around, a kid would read out a list of things that defined the decade. And the lists consisted of things like, for the ‘80s, Days of Our Lives, and for the ‘90s, iPods (and, yes, Home and Away). It was mostly pop culture reference, ‘cool’ stuff. Zero educational content.
And my last Bogan Princess reference (sorry, I can’t stop now …):
When the school principal rang me up to discuss my angry letter, she read me an apology from BP. It read, as I recall: ‘Dear Mrs [!] X, I am sorry about the concert item. My background is in dance and drama and when I chose the song, I wasn’t thinking about the lyrics, I was thinking about the music and the choreography. And I took out the second verse. I am sorry if I offended you.’
How can you not think about the lyrics when choosing a song to teach six-year-olds to sing?
Obviously she did think about them just a little to take out verse two, the MOST offensive. Which still left lines like ‘make me walk, make me talk, do whatever you please/I can act like a star, I can beg on my knees’. And much more.
ANYWAY, my companions of the day, J and M, were very very pleased that I had complained and promised that next time they would write similarly outraged letters so that the school would know it was more than one person bothered by it all.
Hooray! There are other people at the school who both think and have morals.
And as for the title of this post: we’re obviously too cool for a school that gives out rewards of Playstation X-Box keyrings to boys and make-up to girls (I'm still talking Year Ones) for good behaviour – something F let slip in conversation last weekend.
But Bogan Princess is definitely too cool for school. In a different way. If she wants to create mini coolsies, she should start a dance academy or something. Or run kiddie beauty pageants perhaps. But how the hell does someone like that get to be in charge of impressionable (six-year-old!) minds for a year at a time? In the guise of TEACHER?
** I should mention that I have the greatest respect for teachers in general. Real ones. I think the job they do is enormously important and that is why stuff like this makes me so angry. Sigh. Retreat ...
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Employable vibes
I must be giving out excellent professional vibes today.
A random stranger practically leapt out at me as I was barrelling across Bourke Street Mall today and asked 'you wouldn't happen to be looking for a job, would you?'
'Um, nooo,' I replied, and he disappeared. What in the hell was that about? What kind of job does one recruit strangers for on the basis that they happen to be walking past? If I hadn't been in such a hurry to get to the bank, open an account, and dash back the way I came in time to make a lunch date, I would have gone back and asked him WHY, just out of curiosity.
I was twenty minutes late for my lunch date, as it happened. Over papaya fish curry, I was chatting about my upcoming trip and my dilemma over whether to spend extra money I've earnt from a juicy freelance job on a side-trip to New York or on rent and basic living costs when I return to no job. To which my fellow diners responded by urging me to apply for a maternity leave position, as one of them will be taking leave later this year. It's a good job. I'm well qualified for it (if I say so myself!) and I've been working with this publication as a freelancer for over three years, so I know and like the team. And I'd get to leave after a year (my average and preferred length of time at a job) with no guilt attached. I'm tempted. But I did give F a very smug talk last night (in response to a question from him) about how I left my job to spend more time with him (true). So I really should stay on track and keep my nose out of it. Though I did leave promising that I would seriously consider it ...
It's nice to be asked, anyway.
A random stranger practically leapt out at me as I was barrelling across Bourke Street Mall today and asked 'you wouldn't happen to be looking for a job, would you?'
'Um, nooo,' I replied, and he disappeared. What in the hell was that about? What kind of job does one recruit strangers for on the basis that they happen to be walking past? If I hadn't been in such a hurry to get to the bank, open an account, and dash back the way I came in time to make a lunch date, I would have gone back and asked him WHY, just out of curiosity.
I was twenty minutes late for my lunch date, as it happened. Over papaya fish curry, I was chatting about my upcoming trip and my dilemma over whether to spend extra money I've earnt from a juicy freelance job on a side-trip to New York or on rent and basic living costs when I return to no job. To which my fellow diners responded by urging me to apply for a maternity leave position, as one of them will be taking leave later this year. It's a good job. I'm well qualified for it (if I say so myself!) and I've been working with this publication as a freelancer for over three years, so I know and like the team. And I'd get to leave after a year (my average and preferred length of time at a job) with no guilt attached. I'm tempted. But I did give F a very smug talk last night (in response to a question from him) about how I left my job to spend more time with him (true). So I really should stay on track and keep my nose out of it. Though I did leave promising that I would seriously consider it ...
It's nice to be asked, anyway.
First day of school
F was not looking forward to his return to school at all. Or so he said. Until yesterday afternoon, when he pulled out a lettering set he got for a goodbye present from The Husband and made himself an intricately designed 'school folder' out of a discarded manila envelope, with his name and grade in fancy letters. Next, he packed the envelope with the map of the school and all the classrooms and his class list, both provided last year.
He still said he wasn't really looking forward to school.
After dinner, the jig was up. He confessed to being excited, his whole body buzzing with it. He cleaned out his schoolbag. He packed a book about naughty schoolchildren, which he said he would ask his new teacher to read to the class as an example of how NOT to behave. He began plonking various containers on the kitchen table as suggested lunchboxes. These included a shoebox and a Lego container.
We selected and packed his school lunch together after dessert. (Watermelon, a carrot, wholemeal crackers with cheese and two cream biscuits.) He solemnly packed it in his bag, along with his freshly filled West Coast Eagles drinkbottle - a Christmas present from an aunty.
I took his schoolclothes off the line and folded them on the end of his bed.
We were ready.
The bedtime story he chose was, of course, a school story: 4F for Freaks by Leigh Hobbs.
He literally wriggled with excitement as I left the room and switched out the lights. Every time I passed the bedroom door in the hallway, he was squirming back on forth on the bed, contorting his quilt into increasingly odd formations.
'MUUUMMMM.'
'What?'
'Is it really true that the quicker you go to sleep, the quicker you wake up?'
'Yes.'
Silence.
I woke to a boy in my bed this morning - the small kind.
'I'M GOING TO SCHOOL TODAY!'
As I opened the front door to go, he darted back into the house and returned with a shiny green apple.
'You know what you should give to your teacher ...'
Okay. Good sign.
I looked at his head. During the holidays, he has decided that it's cool to wear your cap backwards. In fact, he's told me that he'll 'look like a nerd' otherwise. I've tried, without luck, to convince him it's the other way round. Now, he has tucked up the backflap of his school cap and turned it backwards.
'If a teacher asks you to turn that around, you must do it' I tell him.
'Yes, mum.'
'Are you going to be a good boy for me this year?'
'Uh huh. I have no interest in toilet humour.'
'You don't?'
'No. No interest at all. I mean, I think it's funny when, in The Bad Book, [someone whose name I've forgotten] takes off all his clothes. And when Horrid Henry shows his undies. But I would think to myself "that is something I SHOULD NOT do'."
'Good.'
As we cross the creek and approach the start of the cul-de-sac where the school resides, F squeezes me tight around the waist.
'I'm so happy!' he beams.
It's a good start to the year.
He still said he wasn't really looking forward to school.
After dinner, the jig was up. He confessed to being excited, his whole body buzzing with it. He cleaned out his schoolbag. He packed a book about naughty schoolchildren, which he said he would ask his new teacher to read to the class as an example of how NOT to behave. He began plonking various containers on the kitchen table as suggested lunchboxes. These included a shoebox and a Lego container.
We selected and packed his school lunch together after dessert. (Watermelon, a carrot, wholemeal crackers with cheese and two cream biscuits.) He solemnly packed it in his bag, along with his freshly filled West Coast Eagles drinkbottle - a Christmas present from an aunty.
I took his schoolclothes off the line and folded them on the end of his bed.
We were ready.
The bedtime story he chose was, of course, a school story: 4F for Freaks by Leigh Hobbs.
He literally wriggled with excitement as I left the room and switched out the lights. Every time I passed the bedroom door in the hallway, he was squirming back on forth on the bed, contorting his quilt into increasingly odd formations.
'MUUUMMMM.'
'What?'
'Is it really true that the quicker you go to sleep, the quicker you wake up?'
'Yes.'
Silence.
I woke to a boy in my bed this morning - the small kind.
'I'M GOING TO SCHOOL TODAY!'
As I opened the front door to go, he darted back into the house and returned with a shiny green apple.
'You know what you should give to your teacher ...'
Okay. Good sign.
I looked at his head. During the holidays, he has decided that it's cool to wear your cap backwards. In fact, he's told me that he'll 'look like a nerd' otherwise. I've tried, without luck, to convince him it's the other way round. Now, he has tucked up the backflap of his school cap and turned it backwards.
'If a teacher asks you to turn that around, you must do it' I tell him.
'Yes, mum.'
'Are you going to be a good boy for me this year?'
'Uh huh. I have no interest in toilet humour.'
'You don't?'
'No. No interest at all. I mean, I think it's funny when, in The Bad Book, [someone whose name I've forgotten] takes off all his clothes. And when Horrid Henry shows his undies. But I would think to myself "that is something I SHOULD NOT do'."
'Good.'
As we cross the creek and approach the start of the cul-de-sac where the school resides, F squeezes me tight around the waist.
'I'm so happy!' he beams.
It's a good start to the year.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Surrogate children
I think I must be missing my boy.
Last night, after dinner at my mother-in-law’s house, I read bedtime stories to her foster child, J. He’s nearly five, and just starting to love stories, though his concentration was waning by the end of the second one. At dinner, I was seated next to J, who was more keen on anecdotes than eating.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as our plates emptied and his remained full. ‘I can’t hear you. I won’t be able to hear you until you’ve had four more mouthfuls.’
He shovelled in four hasty forkfuls of peas and continued through his mouthful.
Later, I asked him a question he wasn’t too interested in.
‘Sorry,’ he said, putting his hands over his ears as I had earlier. ‘I can’t hear you’.
Tonight, it was dinner at the North Melbourne Town Hall with two good friends. The heat of the day was slowly evaporating, and the beer garden, blessed with the beginnings of a cool breeze, was packed. While one friend was fetching a round of drinks, mid gossip about old boyfriends, I looked down to see a small girl hovering at my elbow. Dark eyes, long dark hair to her waist, rustling red dress. She whispered a hello, and I engaged her in conversation about her pretty dress (yes, I know) and what she ate for dinner.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked, pointing at my friend.
‘She’s a fairy princess,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t she look like one?’
The small girl frowned and my friend, elegant but utterly street smart with her short red ringlets, square glasses and sleeveless woollen vest, laughed and nodded.
‘She has wings,’ I said. ‘Sparkly ones. They’re in her bag.’
The girl’s eyes widened.
‘Can I see them?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They dissolve in the light. She can only take them out when it gets dark.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I whispered. ‘It’s a secret.’ I put my fingers to my lips. The girl smiled and mirrored my gesture. Our companion returned with the drinks and our conversation drifted back towards grown-up topics. The little girl returned to her table.
‘She’s got wings!’ I heard her say. ‘They’re in her bag!’
On Tuesday night, I rang my dad’s house to speak to F. He sounded a little perturbed.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘I’m watching a movie, Fantastic Four.’
‘Oh, that sounds good. Is it good?’
‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘I’m right in the middle of it, actually.’
‘Oh. Would you like me to let you go, so you can get back to it?’
‘Yes please. Bye Mum.’
I guess he’s having a good time.
Two days to go and I’m there.
Last night, after dinner at my mother-in-law’s house, I read bedtime stories to her foster child, J. He’s nearly five, and just starting to love stories, though his concentration was waning by the end of the second one. At dinner, I was seated next to J, who was more keen on anecdotes than eating.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as our plates emptied and his remained full. ‘I can’t hear you. I won’t be able to hear you until you’ve had four more mouthfuls.’
He shovelled in four hasty forkfuls of peas and continued through his mouthful.
Later, I asked him a question he wasn’t too interested in.
‘Sorry,’ he said, putting his hands over his ears as I had earlier. ‘I can’t hear you’.
Tonight, it was dinner at the North Melbourne Town Hall with two good friends. The heat of the day was slowly evaporating, and the beer garden, blessed with the beginnings of a cool breeze, was packed. While one friend was fetching a round of drinks, mid gossip about old boyfriends, I looked down to see a small girl hovering at my elbow. Dark eyes, long dark hair to her waist, rustling red dress. She whispered a hello, and I engaged her in conversation about her pretty dress (yes, I know) and what she ate for dinner.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked, pointing at my friend.
‘She’s a fairy princess,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t she look like one?’
The small girl frowned and my friend, elegant but utterly street smart with her short red ringlets, square glasses and sleeveless woollen vest, laughed and nodded.
‘She has wings,’ I said. ‘Sparkly ones. They’re in her bag.’
The girl’s eyes widened.
‘Can I see them?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They dissolve in the light. She can only take them out when it gets dark.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I whispered. ‘It’s a secret.’ I put my fingers to my lips. The girl smiled and mirrored my gesture. Our companion returned with the drinks and our conversation drifted back towards grown-up topics. The little girl returned to her table.
‘She’s got wings!’ I heard her say. ‘They’re in her bag!’
On Tuesday night, I rang my dad’s house to speak to F. He sounded a little perturbed.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘I’m watching a movie, Fantastic Four.’
‘Oh, that sounds good. Is it good?’
‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘I’m right in the middle of it, actually.’
‘Oh. Would you like me to let you go, so you can get back to it?’
‘Yes please. Bye Mum.’
I guess he’s having a good time.
Two days to go and I’m there.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Going, going gone
I am feeling distinctly weird.
The Husband is now in Guadalajara, Mexico. He left on Friday. His mother and I escorted him to the airport, where we both clung to him and cried. Especially me.
‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ he told me as we sat, hand-in-hand, on the grey plastic seating by the departure gates. I told him that he would have a wonderful time and an incredible experience and that we’d see each other soon. Or, at least, I think I did.
After the cliché-ridden farewell (hugs, tears, ‘now I’d better go’, ‘now I’d really better go’), I slid my big black sunglasses from atop my head to cover my face, not caring how stupid I looked, just wanting some kind of shield between my puffy eyes and the world. My mother-in-law swept me up in a hug and hurried me out of the building in a swirl of chatter, suggesting coffee in Carlton on the way home.
***
It had been an odd week. The farewell party, exactly one week earlier, was the first time that I felt it was real, that The Husband was really going.
The next day, Saturday, was his last day with F, the first of a series of ‘last days’. We went to the beach, they had a Lego Star Wars Play Station marathon (I let them play for FOUR HOURS. Okay, I fell asleep, woke up and realised they had been playing for FOUR HOURS and promptly switched it off), and The Husband assumed bedtime story-reading duties. In the morning, The Husband went to work for the Last Time. He knelt and said a heartfelt goodbye to F, who was sprawled on the floor making a comic book. F was pretty casual about it, until he got up to follow The Husband to the front door. There, he looked up me and said ‘Mum, we won’t see [The Husband] for a really long time, will we?’ I said ‘no, we won’t’ and he threw himself into The Husband’s arms, hugging him tight, his head buried in his shoulder. I stood in the doorway and cried.
Sunday, F and I had some Quality Time, hanging out around the house reading together, lunch in Yarraville, swimming and a playground in nearby Kensington, and dinner for two at F’s favourite restaurant on the way home. The morning farewell had made me painfully aware that not only was F leaving to spend two weeks away with grandparents, but soon I would be leaving for Mexico. When F’s dad arrived to pick him up at 8.30pm, F held onto his bedposts and shook his head. ‘I want to stay. I haven’t spent enough time here with Mum.’ It wasn’t difficult to change his mind by reminding him that he was about to go to Queensland in the morning (7am flight). Queensland means Granny and Grandad’s swimming pool, Dreamworld, Seaworld, Movieworld, and some kind of themed space restaurant he visits whenever he’s there.
***
Monday was farewell dinner with the mother-in-law, her partner and their foster child. It started off grim. I was mopey and somewhat angry. Nothing had been worked out for where the dogs would go, and I was feeling stuck with the dilemma of what to do with them. A kennel looked like it would cost a couple of thousand dollars we don’t have. The foster child, being four years old, was in particularly chatty spirits. I wasn’t. At the dinner table, my mother-in-law asked me something about how I felt about leaving F, and I broke down into sobs. Not tears trickling discretely down the cheek – gasping, boo-hoo-ing sobs. There were reassuring words and reminders that they will be popping in on F to see how he’s doing while I’m gone, and the conversation moved on to The Husband’s sister, who is living in London and miserable about it. My mother-in-law broke down into sobs, and it was our turn to comfort her. By the time the fresh berries and cream were brought out for dessert, the funereal air of gloom that had hung over proceedings had dissipated somewhat.
**
Tuesday night, I race home from work to conduct a phone interview with Canada. (The last phone interview for some time that will be conducted with my husband wandering in and out of the study in the background.) After my dictaphone has clicked off, signalling that the hour is up, I wander outside, where I find The Husband tossing a tennis ball to the dogs in the driveway. Friends are coming over any minute for a farewell drink, he tells me. Another round of goodbyes. The evening ends on the back deck, as The Husband and guests sit on the couch and drink beers, while I loll on an armchair with a G&T. Then it’s take-away dinner and bed.
All day, I’ve been getting more and more irritated with The Husband. I’ve lunched with a former colleague who is leaving her own husband (for indisputable reasons), a colleague who used to give me ‘oh that’s normal, we fight like that too and look at us, we’ve been married for nearly twenty years’ advice. It was good advice, but now, as she muses that all those little things in her relationship really were ominous after all, I can’t help wondering. All afternoon, small gripes nibble at the edges of my consciousness. Tonight, by the time I go to bed, I am quietly furious with unvoiced angst. And it has all congealed around one central grievance: if he really loved me, why would he plan to leave me FOR SIX MONTHS straight after we get married? How can he really care about me if he leaves me all alone? Which leads to thoughts about how lonely I will be when he’s gone. Which gives birth to a blanket despair.
I go to bed sniffling a little. He comforts me, but not enough to combat my angst. He falls asleep. I am furious. How can he sleep when I am suffering? He clutches a pillow to his chest like a lover. I yank it from his grasp and throw it at the wall. He blinks at me. I grab my own pillow and stalk out of the bedroom. On the couch, under a blanket, I sob and sob until my head aches and my eyes are hollow. It is late when I finally tire myself out and fall asleep.
***
Wednesday. The Husband yells from the bedroom when the alarm goes off. I peel myself off the couch twenty minutes later and sleepwalk into the shower. I peer at myself in the mirror. I look ill. No time to address the problem. I pull on jeans and a singlet top and throw last night’s neglected book in my backpack. On the train, I stare out of the window as the stations flash past. Halfway to the city, I pull out the book, a connected short story collection by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. It draws me in from the first page and distracts me from what I am beginning to recognise as a bad case of narcissism (acted out in the form of a tantrum worthy of a pre-schooler).
The Husband and I speak during the day. Neither of us mentions last night, but as we talk about other things, the memory fades. Tonight is a farewell with The Husband’s dad and his brother, in Carlton.
The restaurant we’ve arranged to meet at is closed, due to a family funeral. I book us into a Mexican restaurant on Johnston Street, Fitzroy instead. Apparently, it serves authentic Mexican cuisine, as opposed to the Tex-Mex fare of most Mexican restaurants. I have to admit that I adore Tex-Mex – nachos and burritos and enchildas - and hope I will like this, too. After all, soon I’ll be eating it every day. On the way to the restaurant, early, I run into The Husband and his brother in an adjacent bar. I was planning to retire to a nearby square of lawn and read my book, but I join them instead. The restaurant is pleasant, unpretentious, decorated with a map of Mexico on the wall and dancing skeletons in the window. Our waitress is Mexican, and she talks to The Husband about Guadalajara. She assures my brother-in-law that he won’t taste the chocolate in his mole sauce. The atmosphere at our table is festive, celebratory. The men drink Mexican beer and my father-in-law, a seasoned traveller, offers tips on navigating LA airport. The meals come. My brother-in-law tastes the chocolate in his mole sauce, but doesn’t mind it. My enchiladas verde turn out to be smothered in lime-green salsa. (‘Ah’, I say to The Husband. ‘So verde is green?’ I tell myself once more that my Year 12 French (green: verte) will help me navigate Spanish. My meal is not bad, though the accompanying beans taste straight out of a can, complete with briney juice.
We finish our meal with cinnamon infused Mexican coffee and I take a round of goodbye photos. The waitresses bring us enormous hats to wear. One of them, studded with glass stones and silver sparkles, sits heavy on our heads as we take turns with it.
Then we are off to Readings to buy books on the way home. I greedily buy four, as I won’t be able to buy English language books soon.
The night ends well. Last night, I was convinced that that was how I would feel from then on – devastated, desperate, angry. Tonight, I realise with relief that I’ve got a lot of that out of my system in one big temper tantrum.
***
Thursday. My last day at work for the week. (And one more week to go!) I’ve taken tomorrow off to accompany The Husband to the airport. Apart from work duties, mainly supervising my (delightful, supremely competent) replacement, my big task today is to process my passport application.
Come midday, I walk to a nearby Post Office where an appointment for the passport interview is unnecessary. The woman at the counter recognises me from when I had my photos done last week. It took five tries to get it right. (‘Don’t worry,’ she’d told me. ‘Not everyone is photogenic.’) At the counter, I realise that I haven’t filled out the form. I did it online until I reached the bit about providing the number of your stolen passport (which I don’t have) and had to give up. Obviously my brain processed that as ‘I have done my passport application’. No drama. I retired to the back of the post office, filled out the form, and returned to the counter. I HATE doing these things with a passion, partly because I don’t drive and therefore have no photo ID, which causes complications. In this case, I needed two guarantors to sign photos confirming that I am indeed me. The interview is fine, every box is ticked off, until we come to my photos. I confidently hand over my guarantor forms and my signed photos and wait.
‘What’s this?’ asks the clerk, returning my photos. ‘Why is this signed twice? And why is this one blank?’
I look. One of the photos carries the specified declaration: ‘I confirm that this is a true photo of (exact name on passport)’ with the signature of my mother-in-law’s partner beneath. So far so good. But beneath that is another signature. The signature of my boss, my other guarantor. And the other photo, the one that was to have carried his written confirmation and signature, is blank.
I curse my boss aloud, swearing floridly.
‘I don’t know why he did that!’ I tell the clerk, vaguely aware that she has little idea what I’m talking about. ‘I TOLD him SPECIFICALLY not to. I TOLD him what he had to do in great detail. I can’t believe this!’
She tries to look sympathetic and asks me if I want to take a new set of photos now. And tells me that not only am I missing one guarantor (the Boss), but his signature invalidates my other guarantor. I need to find her and ask her to redo her declaration on a new photo.
‘You’ll probably need to pay for a priority application if you put it in later than today,’ said the clerk. ‘If you’re travelling on that date.’
Last week, I’d had to try not to giggle or smile as my photo was taken. This time, I try to temper my glower into the camera. I am not successful.
Back at the office, my boss greets me at the door.
‘How did it go?’
‘Well, pretty badly actually.’ I tell him what happened and he looks suitably sheepish.
‘Oh nooo. I’m sooo sorry.’
I bring him the photo again and instruct him in detail what to do, again.
‘The really bad thing,’ I say, ‘is that I have to use this photo. I can’t even believe that I have to show it to you. Don’t laugh.’
I hand him the photo. He laughs until his eyes begin to tear. I can’t blame him.
‘Are you sure,’ he gasps, ‘that they’ll let you into the country with this photo?’
‘Yeah, I look like a serial killer.’
‘You look like a little Dutch girl, with those plaits. An angry little Dutch girl.’
‘I actually thought I looked like trailer trash, like a hillbilly from South Carolina or something.’
‘Oh, YES.’ He laughs harder. ‘Leave it with me.’
So. The passport application will need to be processed on Monday. And I was so angry as I walked back to the office that I didn’t stop for lunch. (I did, however, eat a Magnum.)
Thursday night, we go for dinner a deux at The Husband’s favourite local restaurant. His dad comes over to drop off his old laptop (a year-old Mac Powerbook), his farewell gift to The Husband. I try not to fall asleep on the couch as they go through all the computer’s features. The Husband has a million things to sort out for the morning. I photocopy some documents for him, then, assured that there is nothing else I can help with, I retire to bed, where I read and attempt to stay awake for as long as I can (until 11.30pm). The Husband goes to bed after 3am.
**
Friday. Post-airport. The mother-in-law and I have coffee and tarts at Brunetti’s in Carlton. We talk about other things. We visit my sister-in-law at work, nearby, and go our separate ways. I browse the second-hand bookshop on the corner of Lygon and Elgin streets and buy an Aldous Huxley book I think I should read. Feeling purposeful, I go to the Post Office to process my passport. I discover that I’ve left the documents at home, having absentmindedly taken them out of my bag before dinner last night. I catch the tram home, via the city, where I stop to buy This Life on dvd. I go home, go to bed with a glass of water and a roll of Pringles, and watch the dvd, taking time out to call my son in Adelaide. He shouts into the phone, ‘IT’S MY MUMMY!’ He is at a restaurant with my sisters. We can barely hear one another over the background noise. ‘I can’t hear you’ he says. ‘I’ll go outside.’ My sister comes on the line.
‘He just walked out of the restaurant!’ she laughs.
***
I stay in bed all day Saturday, sleeping and eating and watching my dvd. I feel in limbo, removed from my ordinary life. It is strange to think that The Husband doesn’t live here, that he won’t come home and pick up his dressing gown from the end of the bed or change the pile of CDs beside his computer.
I get up to feed the dogs. I speak on the phone twice, once to the Husband in Guadalajara and once more to F in Adelaide, where he answers the phone at my mother’s house: ‘IS THIS MY MUMMY?’ I think he misses me.
In Guadalajara, The Husband is disoriented. He misses me, too. He says that the city is nothing like he imagined. It’s older, poorer, more run-down. Apparently the road from the airport is lined with shells of abandoned cars. He is the only gringo on the streets near the inn where he is staying. He feels the stares: not unfriendly, but curious. He has been to Wal Mart for supplies. They have all the western goods (and brands) you’d expect, only with Spanish labels. He tells me he has bought a packet of Doritos. He has been there for half an hour.
‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ he says.
***
I feel lucky to have two people who love me and miss me. It’s time to pull myself out of my self-indulgent slump.
Sunday morning, I go out for breakfast. I email The Husband (who is feeling somewhat better). I call F. And I don’t return to bed, or my dvds, all day.
The Husband is now in Guadalajara, Mexico. He left on Friday. His mother and I escorted him to the airport, where we both clung to him and cried. Especially me.
‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ he told me as we sat, hand-in-hand, on the grey plastic seating by the departure gates. I told him that he would have a wonderful time and an incredible experience and that we’d see each other soon. Or, at least, I think I did.
After the cliché-ridden farewell (hugs, tears, ‘now I’d better go’, ‘now I’d really better go’), I slid my big black sunglasses from atop my head to cover my face, not caring how stupid I looked, just wanting some kind of shield between my puffy eyes and the world. My mother-in-law swept me up in a hug and hurried me out of the building in a swirl of chatter, suggesting coffee in Carlton on the way home.
***
It had been an odd week. The farewell party, exactly one week earlier, was the first time that I felt it was real, that The Husband was really going.
The next day, Saturday, was his last day with F, the first of a series of ‘last days’. We went to the beach, they had a Lego Star Wars Play Station marathon (I let them play for FOUR HOURS. Okay, I fell asleep, woke up and realised they had been playing for FOUR HOURS and promptly switched it off), and The Husband assumed bedtime story-reading duties. In the morning, The Husband went to work for the Last Time. He knelt and said a heartfelt goodbye to F, who was sprawled on the floor making a comic book. F was pretty casual about it, until he got up to follow The Husband to the front door. There, he looked up me and said ‘Mum, we won’t see [The Husband] for a really long time, will we?’ I said ‘no, we won’t’ and he threw himself into The Husband’s arms, hugging him tight, his head buried in his shoulder. I stood in the doorway and cried.
Sunday, F and I had some Quality Time, hanging out around the house reading together, lunch in Yarraville, swimming and a playground in nearby Kensington, and dinner for two at F’s favourite restaurant on the way home. The morning farewell had made me painfully aware that not only was F leaving to spend two weeks away with grandparents, but soon I would be leaving for Mexico. When F’s dad arrived to pick him up at 8.30pm, F held onto his bedposts and shook his head. ‘I want to stay. I haven’t spent enough time here with Mum.’ It wasn’t difficult to change his mind by reminding him that he was about to go to Queensland in the morning (7am flight). Queensland means Granny and Grandad’s swimming pool, Dreamworld, Seaworld, Movieworld, and some kind of themed space restaurant he visits whenever he’s there.
***
Monday was farewell dinner with the mother-in-law, her partner and their foster child. It started off grim. I was mopey and somewhat angry. Nothing had been worked out for where the dogs would go, and I was feeling stuck with the dilemma of what to do with them. A kennel looked like it would cost a couple of thousand dollars we don’t have. The foster child, being four years old, was in particularly chatty spirits. I wasn’t. At the dinner table, my mother-in-law asked me something about how I felt about leaving F, and I broke down into sobs. Not tears trickling discretely down the cheek – gasping, boo-hoo-ing sobs. There were reassuring words and reminders that they will be popping in on F to see how he’s doing while I’m gone, and the conversation moved on to The Husband’s sister, who is living in London and miserable about it. My mother-in-law broke down into sobs, and it was our turn to comfort her. By the time the fresh berries and cream were brought out for dessert, the funereal air of gloom that had hung over proceedings had dissipated somewhat.
**
Tuesday night, I race home from work to conduct a phone interview with Canada. (The last phone interview for some time that will be conducted with my husband wandering in and out of the study in the background.) After my dictaphone has clicked off, signalling that the hour is up, I wander outside, where I find The Husband tossing a tennis ball to the dogs in the driveway. Friends are coming over any minute for a farewell drink, he tells me. Another round of goodbyes. The evening ends on the back deck, as The Husband and guests sit on the couch and drink beers, while I loll on an armchair with a G&T. Then it’s take-away dinner and bed.
All day, I’ve been getting more and more irritated with The Husband. I’ve lunched with a former colleague who is leaving her own husband (for indisputable reasons), a colleague who used to give me ‘oh that’s normal, we fight like that too and look at us, we’ve been married for nearly twenty years’ advice. It was good advice, but now, as she muses that all those little things in her relationship really were ominous after all, I can’t help wondering. All afternoon, small gripes nibble at the edges of my consciousness. Tonight, by the time I go to bed, I am quietly furious with unvoiced angst. And it has all congealed around one central grievance: if he really loved me, why would he plan to leave me FOR SIX MONTHS straight after we get married? How can he really care about me if he leaves me all alone? Which leads to thoughts about how lonely I will be when he’s gone. Which gives birth to a blanket despair.
I go to bed sniffling a little. He comforts me, but not enough to combat my angst. He falls asleep. I am furious. How can he sleep when I am suffering? He clutches a pillow to his chest like a lover. I yank it from his grasp and throw it at the wall. He blinks at me. I grab my own pillow and stalk out of the bedroom. On the couch, under a blanket, I sob and sob until my head aches and my eyes are hollow. It is late when I finally tire myself out and fall asleep.
***
Wednesday. The Husband yells from the bedroom when the alarm goes off. I peel myself off the couch twenty minutes later and sleepwalk into the shower. I peer at myself in the mirror. I look ill. No time to address the problem. I pull on jeans and a singlet top and throw last night’s neglected book in my backpack. On the train, I stare out of the window as the stations flash past. Halfway to the city, I pull out the book, a connected short story collection by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. It draws me in from the first page and distracts me from what I am beginning to recognise as a bad case of narcissism (acted out in the form of a tantrum worthy of a pre-schooler).
The Husband and I speak during the day. Neither of us mentions last night, but as we talk about other things, the memory fades. Tonight is a farewell with The Husband’s dad and his brother, in Carlton.
The restaurant we’ve arranged to meet at is closed, due to a family funeral. I book us into a Mexican restaurant on Johnston Street, Fitzroy instead. Apparently, it serves authentic Mexican cuisine, as opposed to the Tex-Mex fare of most Mexican restaurants. I have to admit that I adore Tex-Mex – nachos and burritos and enchildas - and hope I will like this, too. After all, soon I’ll be eating it every day. On the way to the restaurant, early, I run into The Husband and his brother in an adjacent bar. I was planning to retire to a nearby square of lawn and read my book, but I join them instead. The restaurant is pleasant, unpretentious, decorated with a map of Mexico on the wall and dancing skeletons in the window. Our waitress is Mexican, and she talks to The Husband about Guadalajara. She assures my brother-in-law that he won’t taste the chocolate in his mole sauce. The atmosphere at our table is festive, celebratory. The men drink Mexican beer and my father-in-law, a seasoned traveller, offers tips on navigating LA airport. The meals come. My brother-in-law tastes the chocolate in his mole sauce, but doesn’t mind it. My enchiladas verde turn out to be smothered in lime-green salsa. (‘Ah’, I say to The Husband. ‘So verde is green?’ I tell myself once more that my Year 12 French (green: verte) will help me navigate Spanish. My meal is not bad, though the accompanying beans taste straight out of a can, complete with briney juice.
We finish our meal with cinnamon infused Mexican coffee and I take a round of goodbye photos. The waitresses bring us enormous hats to wear. One of them, studded with glass stones and silver sparkles, sits heavy on our heads as we take turns with it.
Then we are off to Readings to buy books on the way home. I greedily buy four, as I won’t be able to buy English language books soon.
The night ends well. Last night, I was convinced that that was how I would feel from then on – devastated, desperate, angry. Tonight, I realise with relief that I’ve got a lot of that out of my system in one big temper tantrum.
***
Thursday. My last day at work for the week. (And one more week to go!) I’ve taken tomorrow off to accompany The Husband to the airport. Apart from work duties, mainly supervising my (delightful, supremely competent) replacement, my big task today is to process my passport application.
Come midday, I walk to a nearby Post Office where an appointment for the passport interview is unnecessary. The woman at the counter recognises me from when I had my photos done last week. It took five tries to get it right. (‘Don’t worry,’ she’d told me. ‘Not everyone is photogenic.’) At the counter, I realise that I haven’t filled out the form. I did it online until I reached the bit about providing the number of your stolen passport (which I don’t have) and had to give up. Obviously my brain processed that as ‘I have done my passport application’. No drama. I retired to the back of the post office, filled out the form, and returned to the counter. I HATE doing these things with a passion, partly because I don’t drive and therefore have no photo ID, which causes complications. In this case, I needed two guarantors to sign photos confirming that I am indeed me. The interview is fine, every box is ticked off, until we come to my photos. I confidently hand over my guarantor forms and my signed photos and wait.
‘What’s this?’ asks the clerk, returning my photos. ‘Why is this signed twice? And why is this one blank?’
I look. One of the photos carries the specified declaration: ‘I confirm that this is a true photo of (exact name on passport)’ with the signature of my mother-in-law’s partner beneath. So far so good. But beneath that is another signature. The signature of my boss, my other guarantor. And the other photo, the one that was to have carried his written confirmation and signature, is blank.
I curse my boss aloud, swearing floridly.
‘I don’t know why he did that!’ I tell the clerk, vaguely aware that she has little idea what I’m talking about. ‘I TOLD him SPECIFICALLY not to. I TOLD him what he had to do in great detail. I can’t believe this!’
She tries to look sympathetic and asks me if I want to take a new set of photos now. And tells me that not only am I missing one guarantor (the Boss), but his signature invalidates my other guarantor. I need to find her and ask her to redo her declaration on a new photo.
‘You’ll probably need to pay for a priority application if you put it in later than today,’ said the clerk. ‘If you’re travelling on that date.’
Last week, I’d had to try not to giggle or smile as my photo was taken. This time, I try to temper my glower into the camera. I am not successful.
Back at the office, my boss greets me at the door.
‘How did it go?’
‘Well, pretty badly actually.’ I tell him what happened and he looks suitably sheepish.
‘Oh nooo. I’m sooo sorry.’
I bring him the photo again and instruct him in detail what to do, again.
‘The really bad thing,’ I say, ‘is that I have to use this photo. I can’t even believe that I have to show it to you. Don’t laugh.’
I hand him the photo. He laughs until his eyes begin to tear. I can’t blame him.
‘Are you sure,’ he gasps, ‘that they’ll let you into the country with this photo?’
‘Yeah, I look like a serial killer.’
‘You look like a little Dutch girl, with those plaits. An angry little Dutch girl.’
‘I actually thought I looked like trailer trash, like a hillbilly from South Carolina or something.’
‘Oh, YES.’ He laughs harder. ‘Leave it with me.’
So. The passport application will need to be processed on Monday. And I was so angry as I walked back to the office that I didn’t stop for lunch. (I did, however, eat a Magnum.)
Thursday night, we go for dinner a deux at The Husband’s favourite local restaurant. His dad comes over to drop off his old laptop (a year-old Mac Powerbook), his farewell gift to The Husband. I try not to fall asleep on the couch as they go through all the computer’s features. The Husband has a million things to sort out for the morning. I photocopy some documents for him, then, assured that there is nothing else I can help with, I retire to bed, where I read and attempt to stay awake for as long as I can (until 11.30pm). The Husband goes to bed after 3am.
**
Friday. Post-airport. The mother-in-law and I have coffee and tarts at Brunetti’s in Carlton. We talk about other things. We visit my sister-in-law at work, nearby, and go our separate ways. I browse the second-hand bookshop on the corner of Lygon and Elgin streets and buy an Aldous Huxley book I think I should read. Feeling purposeful, I go to the Post Office to process my passport. I discover that I’ve left the documents at home, having absentmindedly taken them out of my bag before dinner last night. I catch the tram home, via the city, where I stop to buy This Life on dvd. I go home, go to bed with a glass of water and a roll of Pringles, and watch the dvd, taking time out to call my son in Adelaide. He shouts into the phone, ‘IT’S MY MUMMY!’ He is at a restaurant with my sisters. We can barely hear one another over the background noise. ‘I can’t hear you’ he says. ‘I’ll go outside.’ My sister comes on the line.
‘He just walked out of the restaurant!’ she laughs.
***
I stay in bed all day Saturday, sleeping and eating and watching my dvd. I feel in limbo, removed from my ordinary life. It is strange to think that The Husband doesn’t live here, that he won’t come home and pick up his dressing gown from the end of the bed or change the pile of CDs beside his computer.
I get up to feed the dogs. I speak on the phone twice, once to the Husband in Guadalajara and once more to F in Adelaide, where he answers the phone at my mother’s house: ‘IS THIS MY MUMMY?’ I think he misses me.
In Guadalajara, The Husband is disoriented. He misses me, too. He says that the city is nothing like he imagined. It’s older, poorer, more run-down. Apparently the road from the airport is lined with shells of abandoned cars. He is the only gringo on the streets near the inn where he is staying. He feels the stares: not unfriendly, but curious. He has been to Wal Mart for supplies. They have all the western goods (and brands) you’d expect, only with Spanish labels. He tells me he has bought a packet of Doritos. He has been there for half an hour.
‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ he says.
***
I feel lucky to have two people who love me and miss me. It’s time to pull myself out of my self-indulgent slump.
Sunday morning, I go out for breakfast. I email The Husband (who is feeling somewhat better). I call F. And I don’t return to bed, or my dvds, all day.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Last days
On Friday night we had our farewell bash for the Husband, vaguely combined with a birthday for me. In my experience, these combined bashes never quite work out that way (kind of like combined birthday/Christmas presents). One occasion always overshadows the other, and on this one the Husband’s Big Trip was definitely more significant than my week-old not-so-significant birthday. Which was fine – when your birthday is four days after Christmas, you get very used to people being distracted on the occasion.
It was a good party, though the Husband I had a minor domestic as we were getting ready, while a terribly polite friend of his, who’d arrived early so he wouldn’t have to go home between work and us, sat beneath the air conditioner in the study and pretended it wasn’t happening. The Husband and I are opposites in many ways. One of those is our approach to household cleanliness. I’m no domestic goddess and he, despite initial New-Age mumblings about being a contented House Husband to my Career Woman, is even worse. But whereas I am at one with my inner (and outer) slattern, he inevitably becomes Martha Bloody Stewart within a couple of hours of guests arriving. Which is generally too late to achieve much. Hence, he gets very frustrated and brings up all the Home Beautiful issues that have been stewing beneath the surface since the last blow-up. And I react badly. The storm usually subsides when we finally laugh at ourselves.
So, on this occasion I arrived home from my first week back at work (and my first week of training my replacement) to find laundry thrown all over the bedroom and the couch throw and cushions and strewn across the lounge room floor. I had cycled home from the train station, my ankle-length dress whipping up dangerously above my knees as I rode. I spent the journey clapping my right hand from the handlebars to my knees and back in a possibly doomed attempt to protect my modesty, and arrived home sweaty and flustered. My hair felt like I’d rubbed it in hot chips and I had about an hour to shower and change before people started arriving. Plus, I also had to tidy F’s room before his dad (due ten minutes ago) dropped him off. And this was no ordinary clean-up.
I had arrived home on Tuesday night (my first day back at work) to find my desk covered in even more debris than usual, the expired food from the fridge plonked defiantly on the kitchen table, my own bedroom carpeted in half my wardrobe, and half the house rearranged. And F’s room completely trashed – toy boxes on the bed, comics buried under blankets, cushions and sleeping bags, clothes and textas and drawings everywhere. All of this was part of the Husband’s cleaning-up method, aimed at making previously stashed-away clutter unbearable, so that life is unbearable until it is cleaned up. I’d grumpily done my room and desk until late on Tuesday night (F was at his dad’s this week, so his room seemed less urgent). Wednesday night I got home from work and didn’t move from the couch until bedtime. Thursday night we were out until 1.30am at a very pleasant (and boozy) farewell dinner with some of the Husband’s work friends. So, that night, Friday night, I had to fix F’s room so that he could eventually go to bed, and so that the kids coming to the party could play in there.
I’d known this all day (all week, in fact), but the minute I spotted my laundry-strewn bedroom, I was hit by a tsunami of anger and sheer bloody exhaustion. When there came a knock at the door, I wrenched it open with a snarl, only to find the Husband’s friend (who I had been forewarned about, but had momentarily forgotten) grinning back at me. He was closely followed by the Husband, who went to kiss me hello. I turned so it landed on my cheek and stomped off to have my shower. The fight culminated with shouting in the kitchen and wrestling over a glass of water in the hallway (he didn’t want me to drink out of the new glass yet – it was for the mojitos, I insisted I would drink out of any damn glass I chose to), which predictably spilt all over the carpet.
An hour after my bad-tempered arrival home, my Friend with the Kids (I only have one) swept in. I abandoned my green garbage bags, gave what was left of F’s mess a quick tidy around the edges, and began pouring drinks. We settled at the kitchen table, as the Husband set up a bar on the back deck and began preparing the mojito jug, popping back to take orders. I joined him on the back deck, ostensibly to restock the drinks fridge, but really to test the marital waters. He greeted me with another kiss.
‘No cheek this time?’ he quipped.
‘Do you love me now?’
‘Always did.’
Domestic over, though there was a dangerous moment when the Friend with Kids commented on how tidy the place was, observing: ‘Ariel, you’re not known for being neat. It must have been the Husband’. I dryly informed her that, while usually I could laugh at myself along with everyone else, today was not that day and she should leave it alone. She did.
The mojitos were good, the weather was suitably balmy, some guests arrived early and stayed late, others came for an hour and disappeared. I caught up with old friends, including one couple I ran into at the local pool during the week and invited on inspired impulse and the (much-loved) Friend with the Kids, who made the trek from Gisborne. F had a brilliant time, eating chips and drinking lemonade, playing his Lego Star Wars Play Station game for far too long, worshipping his Bionicles with B, the youngest visiting kid, and making a cubby by torchlight in the backyard, oblivious to the grown-ups downing mojitos and designer beers as he squeezed past them. He even dragged his sleeping bag out onto the deck and had a nap on the couch there with B, before returning to the Play Station. It was only later, when the Friend with Kids departed along with F’s playmates and he was sent to bed, that he took stock of the situation and decided to befriend the grown-ups after all, playing the cute card on various lame-excuse-driven trips from his bedroom to the kitchen table (which my friends had colonised for some reason, creating a kind of Friend Apartheid between us and the Husband’s guests – who I do like - on the deck).
Predictably, my (one) single nightclubbing friend arrived after all my other friends had left. He had fallen asleep on the couch after a big one the night before. It was good of him to then catch the train here and walk the twenty minutes from the local station, pre-mix Jim Beam and Cokes in hand. Apparently, he encountered an all-male twenty-something party along the way, and was rattled when a stray bottle smashed at his feet. (‘Sorry mate!’ they yelled, and invited him to join them.)
We ended the night with Nightclub Friend, the Husband’s early guest, and the Husband’s conspiracy theorist friend, who regaled us with stories about how he has actually bet money on the likelihood that world oil will dry up completely in 2007. The Husband encouraged me to share my own half-joking apocalyptic contingency plan (which I drunkenly did) - that we should start stockpiling bottles of water somewhere for when we run out. As you do at 2am, we began discussing whether we should store the water at my mother’s house in Adelaide (problem: if oil runs out first, we won’t be able to get there) or in the shed (problem: we don’t own the house, and it would be a bugger to lug hundreds of bottles of water around with us every time we move house).
‘I guess at least my mother would be saved if we were stuck here,’ I sighed.
‘That’d be good. You’d want to save your mother, wouldn’t you? You want to take care of your mother most of all,’ rhapsodised the conspiracy theorist.
‘Well, and my son, really.’
Of course, it wasn’t long after that that our remaining trio of guests banded together to catch a cab to the inner north of the city, where they all variously live. The Husband and I waved them off at the door and returned to the deck to inspect the after-party debris and savour the fairy lights (brought out for special occasions only) for a few last moments before bed.
It was a good party, though the Husband I had a minor domestic as we were getting ready, while a terribly polite friend of his, who’d arrived early so he wouldn’t have to go home between work and us, sat beneath the air conditioner in the study and pretended it wasn’t happening. The Husband and I are opposites in many ways. One of those is our approach to household cleanliness. I’m no domestic goddess and he, despite initial New-Age mumblings about being a contented House Husband to my Career Woman, is even worse. But whereas I am at one with my inner (and outer) slattern, he inevitably becomes Martha Bloody Stewart within a couple of hours of guests arriving. Which is generally too late to achieve much. Hence, he gets very frustrated and brings up all the Home Beautiful issues that have been stewing beneath the surface since the last blow-up. And I react badly. The storm usually subsides when we finally laugh at ourselves.
So, on this occasion I arrived home from my first week back at work (and my first week of training my replacement) to find laundry thrown all over the bedroom and the couch throw and cushions and strewn across the lounge room floor. I had cycled home from the train station, my ankle-length dress whipping up dangerously above my knees as I rode. I spent the journey clapping my right hand from the handlebars to my knees and back in a possibly doomed attempt to protect my modesty, and arrived home sweaty and flustered. My hair felt like I’d rubbed it in hot chips and I had about an hour to shower and change before people started arriving. Plus, I also had to tidy F’s room before his dad (due ten minutes ago) dropped him off. And this was no ordinary clean-up.
I had arrived home on Tuesday night (my first day back at work) to find my desk covered in even more debris than usual, the expired food from the fridge plonked defiantly on the kitchen table, my own bedroom carpeted in half my wardrobe, and half the house rearranged. And F’s room completely trashed – toy boxes on the bed, comics buried under blankets, cushions and sleeping bags, clothes and textas and drawings everywhere. All of this was part of the Husband’s cleaning-up method, aimed at making previously stashed-away clutter unbearable, so that life is unbearable until it is cleaned up. I’d grumpily done my room and desk until late on Tuesday night (F was at his dad’s this week, so his room seemed less urgent). Wednesday night I got home from work and didn’t move from the couch until bedtime. Thursday night we were out until 1.30am at a very pleasant (and boozy) farewell dinner with some of the Husband’s work friends. So, that night, Friday night, I had to fix F’s room so that he could eventually go to bed, and so that the kids coming to the party could play in there.
I’d known this all day (all week, in fact), but the minute I spotted my laundry-strewn bedroom, I was hit by a tsunami of anger and sheer bloody exhaustion. When there came a knock at the door, I wrenched it open with a snarl, only to find the Husband’s friend (who I had been forewarned about, but had momentarily forgotten) grinning back at me. He was closely followed by the Husband, who went to kiss me hello. I turned so it landed on my cheek and stomped off to have my shower. The fight culminated with shouting in the kitchen and wrestling over a glass of water in the hallway (he didn’t want me to drink out of the new glass yet – it was for the mojitos, I insisted I would drink out of any damn glass I chose to), which predictably spilt all over the carpet.
An hour after my bad-tempered arrival home, my Friend with the Kids (I only have one) swept in. I abandoned my green garbage bags, gave what was left of F’s mess a quick tidy around the edges, and began pouring drinks. We settled at the kitchen table, as the Husband set up a bar on the back deck and began preparing the mojito jug, popping back to take orders. I joined him on the back deck, ostensibly to restock the drinks fridge, but really to test the marital waters. He greeted me with another kiss.
‘No cheek this time?’ he quipped.
‘Do you love me now?’
‘Always did.’
Domestic over, though there was a dangerous moment when the Friend with Kids commented on how tidy the place was, observing: ‘Ariel, you’re not known for being neat. It must have been the Husband’. I dryly informed her that, while usually I could laugh at myself along with everyone else, today was not that day and she should leave it alone. She did.
The mojitos were good, the weather was suitably balmy, some guests arrived early and stayed late, others came for an hour and disappeared. I caught up with old friends, including one couple I ran into at the local pool during the week and invited on inspired impulse and the (much-loved) Friend with the Kids, who made the trek from Gisborne. F had a brilliant time, eating chips and drinking lemonade, playing his Lego Star Wars Play Station game for far too long, worshipping his Bionicles with B, the youngest visiting kid, and making a cubby by torchlight in the backyard, oblivious to the grown-ups downing mojitos and designer beers as he squeezed past them. He even dragged his sleeping bag out onto the deck and had a nap on the couch there with B, before returning to the Play Station. It was only later, when the Friend with Kids departed along with F’s playmates and he was sent to bed, that he took stock of the situation and decided to befriend the grown-ups after all, playing the cute card on various lame-excuse-driven trips from his bedroom to the kitchen table (which my friends had colonised for some reason, creating a kind of Friend Apartheid between us and the Husband’s guests – who I do like - on the deck).
Predictably, my (one) single nightclubbing friend arrived after all my other friends had left. He had fallen asleep on the couch after a big one the night before. It was good of him to then catch the train here and walk the twenty minutes from the local station, pre-mix Jim Beam and Cokes in hand. Apparently, he encountered an all-male twenty-something party along the way, and was rattled when a stray bottle smashed at his feet. (‘Sorry mate!’ they yelled, and invited him to join them.)
We ended the night with Nightclub Friend, the Husband’s early guest, and the Husband’s conspiracy theorist friend, who regaled us with stories about how he has actually bet money on the likelihood that world oil will dry up completely in 2007. The Husband encouraged me to share my own half-joking apocalyptic contingency plan (which I drunkenly did) - that we should start stockpiling bottles of water somewhere for when we run out. As you do at 2am, we began discussing whether we should store the water at my mother’s house in Adelaide (problem: if oil runs out first, we won’t be able to get there) or in the shed (problem: we don’t own the house, and it would be a bugger to lug hundreds of bottles of water around with us every time we move house).
‘I guess at least my mother would be saved if we were stuck here,’ I sighed.
‘That’d be good. You’d want to save your mother, wouldn’t you? You want to take care of your mother most of all,’ rhapsodised the conspiracy theorist.
‘Well, and my son, really.’
Of course, it wasn’t long after that that our remaining trio of guests banded together to catch a cab to the inner north of the city, where they all variously live. The Husband and I waved them off at the door and returned to the deck to inspect the after-party debris and savour the fairy lights (brought out for special occasions only) for a few last moments before bed.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Hell is other children + my child
F is no longer playing with his best friend, outside the schoolyard. That’s it.
So, now I’ve done one more thing I always told myself I wouldn’t: I’ve messed with my child’s friendships.
But it’s not just that F and A don’t play nicely together anymore. It’s not all about the rude words, the dobbing, the tantrums, the attitude. It’s also that I can’t stand Those Conversations with The Mother anymore.
I can handle criticisms of F’s behaviour. Even if I don’t agree with the interpretation, I can listen to it and (mostly) respect it. But criticism of my son that centres on ‘his personality’, I won’t tolerate. That’s a criticism of who he inherently is.
After two Very Bad play dates this week, the first at my house, the second at The Mother’s, I decided to be honest about what I see as The Problem With F.
‘I think,’ I told the Mother, ‘that part of F’s problem is being an only child. He has no family here with kids, I have no friends with kids, and he’s only just got a brother. He’s good with me, and he’s usually very good in the classroom these days. It’s in the playground and when he has kids over that there are problems. My instinct is to say that he can’t have friends over to play, or visit friends, anymore, but that won’t solve anything. He needs to have other kids over more, unfortunately. He needs to learn how to play with them properly.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s the problem,’ said The Mother blithely. ‘I think the problem is his personality.’
I looked at her, not quite believing my ears, and not sure if she meant what I thought I heard.
‘Um, yes, the way his personality is influenced by being an only child.’
‘Oh, no. It’s just his personality.’
***
I’ll backtrack now, to the first Very Bad play date. My house. Wednesday. 8.45am.
I open the door, in my pyjamas, to the Mother, A and his younger brother, W. They are dressed in matching outfits, with matching vinyl backpacks. The Mother is on her way to work, and I have the boys for the day.
Somewhat inexplicably (to me, anyway), the Mother has insisted on packing lunch for her boys, though I’ve told her not to bother. After all, I’ll be feeding F.
‘It means they can just eat when they’re hungry, and they won’t have to ask you for food,’ she explains.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve told F not to constantly ask for food at her house. The Husband’s less charitable view is that it’s because she thinks we won’t feed them properly. The genesis of this is an idea we once had (and discarded) for similar reasons. F went to play for the day at a friend’s house, for the first time. When he was dropped home, he crawled out of the car and literally collapsed on our doorstep, moaning and clutching his stomach. (I’m going to be siiiick!’) He’s a drama queen, so I poked him and told him to get up. The mother dropping him off cheerily informed me: ‘Oh, he’s probably a bit full. He’s had chips, popcorn, cake, two bowls of chocolate ice-cream – he asked so nicely for a second bowl, I couldn’t say no – and biscuits. Boy, he loved my biscuits. Couldn’t get enough of them!’ I looked at F again. ‘Can I go to bed?’ he asked in a small voice. That’s when I knew he was genuinely unwell. I spent the next 45 minutes reading him stories while he moaned on his bed. We thought about sending him with a packed lunch next time, but discarded the idea as too rude. (Though I’m well aware we could be projecting, in this case.)
Anyway: the boys raced into the lounge room, where F and The Husband were playing F’s new Lego Star Wars Playstation game. The Husband downed his control and disappeared for a shower. F, still in his PJs and dressing gown, tossed a coin to decide who should take over the Husband’s turn first. I set the timer for 12 minutes and arranged that the boys would rotate every time the timer went off. I disappeared too, to the kitchen to make breakfast pancakes. Down the hallway, I could hear the bickering start.
‘I want to be Luke.’
‘No, I do!’
‘Euuwww! I’m Princess Leia! Help me change characters! I’m a girl!’
It is my policy not to know anything about working the Playstation, which I loathe. It means that, at times like this, the Husband is summoned to sort things out.
The Husband has things to do today, he informs me as he scarfs down his daily rice porridge. I eye him suspiciously.
‘So, you’re leaving me alone with the kids?’
‘I’ll hurry back.’
I think about this, and decide I’d rather cope on my own. They will drive him even crazier than they will me. And there are some perks to being the stepfather.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Take as long as you like. As long as you can.’
Soon, the boys are all furnished with honey-smeared pancakes. W has brought breakfast as well as lunch. His plastic container of Nutri-Grain languishes uneaten on the floor. I tell them Play Station time is over. After F gets dressed, they descend on his room to play their favourite game, Pooland, which consists of F and A making a cubby under the bed, with an adjoining cubby for W between the bed-end and the wall, where the toyboxes usually sit. W comes to inform me that he needs help clearing the territory, and I oblige.
Half an hour and much merriment later, they have moved on to Lego. I am summoned to adjudicate on who got which piece first and who snatched from who. At some point, I admonish F for not sharing a new Christmas toy.
‘We share with him at our house!’ exclaims A, and I agree.
After a few rounds of me being Lego Judge, the boys migrate to the study, where they sprawl across the floor, drawing. They are relatively content.
I pass F’s bedroom and pause in the doorway to inspect the damage. It is a spectacular mess. The toyboxes are empty; their contents forming a second layer of carpet. The floor rug ripples like the aftermath of an earthquake, littered with Lego and other debris.
I summon them for a clean-up. I get a chorus of ‘excuse me, but I didn’t play with that one’ and ‘I didn’t touch those toys’.
I channel my mother: ‘I don’t care who made what mess. You all clean it all up.’
They do.
‘Excuse me,’ calls A. ‘F isn’t really cleaning up. We’re doing it all.’
I look at them. A and W are mechanically piling toys into boxes. F is wandering across the room, singing to himself, fondling a piece of Lego.
‘Okay,’ I concede. ‘You boys can go back to drawing.’
They disappear in an instant.
‘But THAT’S NOT FAIR!’
So begins an argument that escalates to some smart-arse remark I don’t remember. I smack his hand, not very hard. He glares at me defiantly.
‘Didn’t hurt.’
I smack him again, harder.
‘Still didn’t hurt.’
‘What,’ I say, ‘on EARTH are you doing? Why would you say something like that to me? Why, F, do you WANT me to hurt you?’
‘I’m trying to show you how tough I am,’ he spits.
So, now I’ve done one more thing I always told myself I wouldn’t: I’ve messed with my child’s friendships.
But it’s not just that F and A don’t play nicely together anymore. It’s not all about the rude words, the dobbing, the tantrums, the attitude. It’s also that I can’t stand Those Conversations with The Mother anymore.
I can handle criticisms of F’s behaviour. Even if I don’t agree with the interpretation, I can listen to it and (mostly) respect it. But criticism of my son that centres on ‘his personality’, I won’t tolerate. That’s a criticism of who he inherently is.
After two Very Bad play dates this week, the first at my house, the second at The Mother’s, I decided to be honest about what I see as The Problem With F.
‘I think,’ I told the Mother, ‘that part of F’s problem is being an only child. He has no family here with kids, I have no friends with kids, and he’s only just got a brother. He’s good with me, and he’s usually very good in the classroom these days. It’s in the playground and when he has kids over that there are problems. My instinct is to say that he can’t have friends over to play, or visit friends, anymore, but that won’t solve anything. He needs to have other kids over more, unfortunately. He needs to learn how to play with them properly.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s the problem,’ said The Mother blithely. ‘I think the problem is his personality.’
I looked at her, not quite believing my ears, and not sure if she meant what I thought I heard.
‘Um, yes, the way his personality is influenced by being an only child.’
‘Oh, no. It’s just his personality.’
***
I’ll backtrack now, to the first Very Bad play date. My house. Wednesday. 8.45am.
I open the door, in my pyjamas, to the Mother, A and his younger brother, W. They are dressed in matching outfits, with matching vinyl backpacks. The Mother is on her way to work, and I have the boys for the day.
Somewhat inexplicably (to me, anyway), the Mother has insisted on packing lunch for her boys, though I’ve told her not to bother. After all, I’ll be feeding F.
‘It means they can just eat when they’re hungry, and they won’t have to ask you for food,’ she explains.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve told F not to constantly ask for food at her house. The Husband’s less charitable view is that it’s because she thinks we won’t feed them properly. The genesis of this is an idea we once had (and discarded) for similar reasons. F went to play for the day at a friend’s house, for the first time. When he was dropped home, he crawled out of the car and literally collapsed on our doorstep, moaning and clutching his stomach. (I’m going to be siiiick!’) He’s a drama queen, so I poked him and told him to get up. The mother dropping him off cheerily informed me: ‘Oh, he’s probably a bit full. He’s had chips, popcorn, cake, two bowls of chocolate ice-cream – he asked so nicely for a second bowl, I couldn’t say no – and biscuits. Boy, he loved my biscuits. Couldn’t get enough of them!’ I looked at F again. ‘Can I go to bed?’ he asked in a small voice. That’s when I knew he was genuinely unwell. I spent the next 45 minutes reading him stories while he moaned on his bed. We thought about sending him with a packed lunch next time, but discarded the idea as too rude. (Though I’m well aware we could be projecting, in this case.)
Anyway: the boys raced into the lounge room, where F and The Husband were playing F’s new Lego Star Wars Playstation game. The Husband downed his control and disappeared for a shower. F, still in his PJs and dressing gown, tossed a coin to decide who should take over the Husband’s turn first. I set the timer for 12 minutes and arranged that the boys would rotate every time the timer went off. I disappeared too, to the kitchen to make breakfast pancakes. Down the hallway, I could hear the bickering start.
‘I want to be Luke.’
‘No, I do!’
‘Euuwww! I’m Princess Leia! Help me change characters! I’m a girl!’
It is my policy not to know anything about working the Playstation, which I loathe. It means that, at times like this, the Husband is summoned to sort things out.
The Husband has things to do today, he informs me as he scarfs down his daily rice porridge. I eye him suspiciously.
‘So, you’re leaving me alone with the kids?’
‘I’ll hurry back.’
I think about this, and decide I’d rather cope on my own. They will drive him even crazier than they will me. And there are some perks to being the stepfather.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Take as long as you like. As long as you can.’
Soon, the boys are all furnished with honey-smeared pancakes. W has brought breakfast as well as lunch. His plastic container of Nutri-Grain languishes uneaten on the floor. I tell them Play Station time is over. After F gets dressed, they descend on his room to play their favourite game, Pooland, which consists of F and A making a cubby under the bed, with an adjoining cubby for W between the bed-end and the wall, where the toyboxes usually sit. W comes to inform me that he needs help clearing the territory, and I oblige.
Half an hour and much merriment later, they have moved on to Lego. I am summoned to adjudicate on who got which piece first and who snatched from who. At some point, I admonish F for not sharing a new Christmas toy.
‘We share with him at our house!’ exclaims A, and I agree.
After a few rounds of me being Lego Judge, the boys migrate to the study, where they sprawl across the floor, drawing. They are relatively content.
I pass F’s bedroom and pause in the doorway to inspect the damage. It is a spectacular mess. The toyboxes are empty; their contents forming a second layer of carpet. The floor rug ripples like the aftermath of an earthquake, littered with Lego and other debris.
I summon them for a clean-up. I get a chorus of ‘excuse me, but I didn’t play with that one’ and ‘I didn’t touch those toys’.
I channel my mother: ‘I don’t care who made what mess. You all clean it all up.’
They do.
‘Excuse me,’ calls A. ‘F isn’t really cleaning up. We’re doing it all.’
I look at them. A and W are mechanically piling toys into boxes. F is wandering across the room, singing to himself, fondling a piece of Lego.
‘Okay,’ I concede. ‘You boys can go back to drawing.’
They disappear in an instant.
‘But THAT’S NOT FAIR!’
So begins an argument that escalates to some smart-arse remark I don’t remember. I smack his hand, not very hard. He glares at me defiantly.
‘Didn’t hurt.’
I smack him again, harder.
‘Still didn’t hurt.’
‘What,’ I say, ‘on EARTH are you doing? Why would you say something like that to me? Why, F, do you WANT me to hurt you?’
‘I’m trying to show you how tough I am,’ he spits.
I am astounded at his honesty. And furious, of course.
I tell him that’s ridiculous, that showing me how tough he is does not impress me and won’t help him one little bit. At the same time, I’m aware that the ‘tough’ image is for the benefit of his friends on the other side of the door. So. It starts, already.
I tell him that there will be no more Bionicles again, for the rest of the week. His entire body clenches with anger, concentrated in the tight fists bunched at his sides. He fixes his gaze on me and yells, at the top of his lungs.
‘SHIT!’
His eyes dare me to respond - and recoil from the possible consequences.
‘That’s your Lego and your Exoforce and your Bionicles and your Playstation gone for a week. Your friends can play with them, but not you.’
‘SHIT!’
I am engulfed in the same pure anger he is burning with. The flames have leapt across the divide between us. I stand there and splutter, genuinely speechless. He has never done anything like this before, never. Well, not since the terrible twos anyway. And he didn’t swear then.
I scoop up the toyboxes filled with Lego and take them to the study, one by one. A and W watch, wide-eyed, as I stack them neatly. I manage a smile, and a few reassuring words. ‘I know what you should do!’ shouts A excitedly. ‘You should tell him Santa won’t come to him next year! No Santa!’ I manage a ‘hmmm, maybe not’ before I storm back into the bedroom, green garbage bag in hand.
‘That’s IT!’ I shout. ‘I’m taking some of your toys to give away to kids who deserve them. You’re obviously spoilt. You’ve got too many things.’
I am shocked anew when the tiny powerhouse that F has become, fuelled by rage, is upon me. A punch lands in my chest, hard and deliberate. Another first. I look at my son and I don’t recognise what I see glaring back at me. I am appalled, at both of us. I grab him and try to smack his bottom. He ducks and weaves, twisting in my grasp, manages to squirm himself away from me. His triumphant grin taunts me. There is no doubt about it. He is winning and I am losing control fast. Okay, I’ve already lost it.
‘Go to the laundry,’ I order.
‘No.’
I try to bundle him up under my arm, but it is useless. He grips my legs with his, an angry koala at my ankles.
In desperation, I pry him off, shut the door on him and call F’s father on his mobile. He is at the cricket. With his parents and his new in-laws, who will all be most impressed that I need his help to discipline his son. Oh well.
‘F is being physically abusive,’ I tell him breathlessly. ‘He punched me and now he won’t do anything I tell him. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, send him to the laundry.’
‘He won’t go.’
‘Make him.’
‘I can’t. I already tried.’
‘You’re bigger than him.’
‘I know.’
Eventually, he offers to speak to F. I gratefully accept. As I said, I am desperate. I give F the phone, tell him who it is in ominous tones, and watch him take it reluctantly. I stand back and wait for a grim telling-off to begin.
I hear: ‘So, mate. I hear you and your mother are having some problems. What’s happening?’ He sounds chummy, inviting confidences. I listen to a few more lines of this before snatching back the phone.
‘Be angry!’ I say. ‘You can’t be nice to him. He punched me! Be stern with him.’
I pass back the phone and watch F listen to more of his dad’s calm exhortations to please be good and show your mother some respect. To be fair, as he listens, some of the heat dies down. His eyes lose that possessed gleam and his body language softens, goes limp.
I put away the green garbage bag - my concession to a truce. The rational part of my brain begins to take control again, my instincts and emotions receding. We have some stern words about respect and appropriate behaviour, language and attitude. I tell him to clean up his whole room, not just the recent mess.
I return to the study, and sit at my computer. I smile inanely at A and W and ask them about their pictures.
‘Remember how you were going to give F’s Bionicles to his friends if he was naughty?’ asks A.
‘Mmmm,’ I mumble.
‘Are you still going to do that?’
‘That was before Christmas. It’s passed now.’
‘So, will you do it?’
‘No.’
He returns to his picture.
F comes to show me his clean room. He is meek and obedient. Peace reigns for a while. I make F grilled cheese on toast for lunch, with apple on the side.
‘Can we have that?’ asks A.
‘You’ve got your sandwiches.’
Their faces fall. I return to the kitchen and immediately relent. I bring the boys grilled cheese and apple. They eat companionably over a Superman comic. After lunch, they want to play Pooland again.
‘Outside,’ I say. ‘I don’t want the room trashed again, and you don’t want to clean it up. Do you?’
They don’t. I help them forage for blankets, cushions and sleeping bags, which they trail outside. I read my book on the couch, inside.
I receive various complaints. Bad words. Not sharing. I deal with them. W runs screaming into the house, F’s Hot Wheels fleecy blanket streaming out behind him. F is in hot pursuit.
‘Give it back! Give it back!’
W has conducted a raid on F’s fort. I remind W he has his own blanket for his fort.
‘But I needed another one.’
‘Well, you can’t just snatch something someone else is playing with.’ I fetch him a large towel.
The Husband rings from the relative safety of Highpoint Shopping Centre. I give him a brief run-down.
‘Do you want me to talk to F?’ he offers. I am reminded of how much I love him. I tell him I’ve got it covered. W appears at my side, grinning up at me.
‘I’m Darth Maul!’ he beams from beneath a swirl of texta.
‘Oh, W,’ I say. ‘No! You can’t draw on your face with texta.’
F and A run by, squealing with approval.
‘NO!’ I shout after them. ‘You can’t draw on yourselves with texta!’
I tell the Husband I really should go. I am about to hang up when F and A run past again, covered in texta. They bolt into the bathroom, followed by W. A slams the door behind them. Hard. The door is faulty and is never shut, because it jams and can’t be opened. Right now, it is jammed at a very strange angle.
‘Oh nooooo,’ I wail down the phone. ‘I really have to go now.’
I tell the Husband he should shop as long as he can. One of us might as well be sane tonight.
I peer through the crack in the doorway at the boys. F and A’s faces are worse than W’s. They are all giggling madly.
‘I’ll open the window and we’ll all climb out,’ announces F.
‘NO!’
It takes me roughly 15 minutes to get the door open. It feels much longer.
I catch the boys as they pour out enthusiastically.
‘I thought we were going to be stuck FOREVER!’
‘I need to wash your faces.’
I do A and W first. It takes a long time. The boys giggle as I come to F. He rolls up his sleeves.
‘Look!’
‘He did his willy, too,’ says A.
‘And his bum,’ echoes W.
I inspect his handiwork and grimly deposit him in the shower.
After all the boys have been cleaned up, I feel slightly bad. They were being creative. They were naughty for using texta, but what if I had face paint? I am inspired. I dig out a few old lipsticks I never use. I take them into the backyard and tell the boys they can use them to paint their faces.
‘This is make-up,’ I say. ‘It’s MEANT for faces.’
Ten minutes later, the boys visit me in the lounge room. I regret my decision. A has covered his entire face in glitter-flecked orangey bronze lipstick. He shimmers as he bounces excitedly before me.
‘I look CHINESE!’ he shouts.
I haven’t seen any Chinese people with glittery bronze faces, but I am too gobsmacked to respond. This time, it’s my fault. He has also helped himself to my mascara, which he has used to paint his eyebrows.
I let them dance about in front of my bedroom mirror for as long as I can stand it. I take a group photo, then summon them to the bathroom for another round of scrubbing. They emerge with raw red faces. I leave A until last. I takes a very, very long time. When I finish, his eyebrows are still tinged with glowing orange, as is his hairline. I can’t help laughing. He looks vaguely demonic.
'I’ll have another go later,’ I tell him.
He runs off, grateful for an end to his ordeal.
I return to my book. A soon appears before me, sniffing and rubbing his shoulder. His other hand grips a light sabre.
‘F hit me.’
I yell for F. He appears, wielding his own light sabre.
‘Did you hit A?’ I demand.
‘It was an accident.’
I look at the light sabres.
‘Did he hit you with the light sabre?’ A nods.
‘Were you having a light sabre duel?’ He nods again.
‘Was it an accident?’ Another nod.
I dismiss them.
There is lots of to-ing and fro-ing from the yard, F’s bedroom and the study. There are squabbles over using W’s red light sabre. (‘It’s mine, and I want my brother to use it, not F.’ I allow this.) Half an hour later, there is a squabble over F’s green light sabre. (‘I want my brother to use it,’ says A. I don’t allow this.) There are tears when F adds something to W’s picture. I tell him off. A leans over and adds something.
‘SEE!’ yells F. ‘A did it!’
W sniffs.
‘He’s allowed to,’ he says.
‘Oh, and you don’t like me. I get it.’
‘I do. You’re my friend,’ says W solemnly. ‘But he’s my BROTHER.’ He shoots A a worshipful glance. It seems that the old F-A alliance has shifted in favour of a brotherly one, today.
When The Mother arrives to pick up the boys, she asks how they were.
‘Oh, you know,’ I reply. ‘They were, um, interesting. You know how boys can be. There was a bit of fighting, and F was pretty naughty. But it was okay.’
***
I have a blissful day on Friday, my birthday. After the early morning festivities, I drop F at the Mother’s soon after 9am, telling him to treat The Mother with respect and do as she says. The Husband and I spend the day eating, shopping and lazing about.
At 6pm, I arrive at The Mother’s. She leads me into the kitchen, where smoke is pouring from the griller. Forgotten toast. F and W are quiet, nestled under a sleeping bag before the TV. A is nowhere to be seen.
The other tells me that she has had a tough day. Apparently, A had a screaming tantrum when F wanted to play with his new toys. Didn’t even want him in his bedroom. He is asleep in the mother’s bed. They had an afternoon nap together while W and F watched a DVD.
Apparently, the boys were badly behaved at the Vic markets, this morning’s outing. They were giggling and pointing at a girl’s exposed muffin top as they walked behind her. Her friends overheard and turned around. They were shouting questions at passers by while The Mother was making purchases at a stall.
‘Well,’ I admit. ‘I guess I have seen F do that before. On Grand Final Day, he was stopping people in the street to ask if they were barracking for Eagles or Swans.’
The Mother doesn’t react.
‘And they’ve been talking about sex again,’ she continues. ‘They were teasing each other, saying they wanted to have sex with a girl at school. And they said something about boobs.’
I sigh and apologise.
‘Why do you think F is so obsessed with sex?’ she asks.
‘SHIT!’
I am engulfed in the same pure anger he is burning with. The flames have leapt across the divide between us. I stand there and splutter, genuinely speechless. He has never done anything like this before, never. Well, not since the terrible twos anyway. And he didn’t swear then.
I scoop up the toyboxes filled with Lego and take them to the study, one by one. A and W watch, wide-eyed, as I stack them neatly. I manage a smile, and a few reassuring words. ‘I know what you should do!’ shouts A excitedly. ‘You should tell him Santa won’t come to him next year! No Santa!’ I manage a ‘hmmm, maybe not’ before I storm back into the bedroom, green garbage bag in hand.
‘That’s IT!’ I shout. ‘I’m taking some of your toys to give away to kids who deserve them. You’re obviously spoilt. You’ve got too many things.’
I am shocked anew when the tiny powerhouse that F has become, fuelled by rage, is upon me. A punch lands in my chest, hard and deliberate. Another first. I look at my son and I don’t recognise what I see glaring back at me. I am appalled, at both of us. I grab him and try to smack his bottom. He ducks and weaves, twisting in my grasp, manages to squirm himself away from me. His triumphant grin taunts me. There is no doubt about it. He is winning and I am losing control fast. Okay, I’ve already lost it.
‘Go to the laundry,’ I order.
‘No.’
I try to bundle him up under my arm, but it is useless. He grips my legs with his, an angry koala at my ankles.
In desperation, I pry him off, shut the door on him and call F’s father on his mobile. He is at the cricket. With his parents and his new in-laws, who will all be most impressed that I need his help to discipline his son. Oh well.
‘F is being physically abusive,’ I tell him breathlessly. ‘He punched me and now he won’t do anything I tell him. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, send him to the laundry.’
‘He won’t go.’
‘Make him.’
‘I can’t. I already tried.’
‘You’re bigger than him.’
‘I know.’
Eventually, he offers to speak to F. I gratefully accept. As I said, I am desperate. I give F the phone, tell him who it is in ominous tones, and watch him take it reluctantly. I stand back and wait for a grim telling-off to begin.
I hear: ‘So, mate. I hear you and your mother are having some problems. What’s happening?’ He sounds chummy, inviting confidences. I listen to a few more lines of this before snatching back the phone.
‘Be angry!’ I say. ‘You can’t be nice to him. He punched me! Be stern with him.’
I pass back the phone and watch F listen to more of his dad’s calm exhortations to please be good and show your mother some respect. To be fair, as he listens, some of the heat dies down. His eyes lose that possessed gleam and his body language softens, goes limp.
I put away the green garbage bag - my concession to a truce. The rational part of my brain begins to take control again, my instincts and emotions receding. We have some stern words about respect and appropriate behaviour, language and attitude. I tell him to clean up his whole room, not just the recent mess.
I return to the study, and sit at my computer. I smile inanely at A and W and ask them about their pictures.
‘Remember how you were going to give F’s Bionicles to his friends if he was naughty?’ asks A.
‘Mmmm,’ I mumble.
‘Are you still going to do that?’
‘That was before Christmas. It’s passed now.’
‘So, will you do it?’
‘No.’
He returns to his picture.
F comes to show me his clean room. He is meek and obedient. Peace reigns for a while. I make F grilled cheese on toast for lunch, with apple on the side.
‘Can we have that?’ asks A.
‘You’ve got your sandwiches.’
Their faces fall. I return to the kitchen and immediately relent. I bring the boys grilled cheese and apple. They eat companionably over a Superman comic. After lunch, they want to play Pooland again.
‘Outside,’ I say. ‘I don’t want the room trashed again, and you don’t want to clean it up. Do you?’
They don’t. I help them forage for blankets, cushions and sleeping bags, which they trail outside. I read my book on the couch, inside.
I receive various complaints. Bad words. Not sharing. I deal with them. W runs screaming into the house, F’s Hot Wheels fleecy blanket streaming out behind him. F is in hot pursuit.
‘Give it back! Give it back!’
W has conducted a raid on F’s fort. I remind W he has his own blanket for his fort.
‘But I needed another one.’
‘Well, you can’t just snatch something someone else is playing with.’ I fetch him a large towel.
The Husband rings from the relative safety of Highpoint Shopping Centre. I give him a brief run-down.
‘Do you want me to talk to F?’ he offers. I am reminded of how much I love him. I tell him I’ve got it covered. W appears at my side, grinning up at me.
‘I’m Darth Maul!’ he beams from beneath a swirl of texta.
‘Oh, W,’ I say. ‘No! You can’t draw on your face with texta.’
F and A run by, squealing with approval.
‘NO!’ I shout after them. ‘You can’t draw on yourselves with texta!’
I tell the Husband I really should go. I am about to hang up when F and A run past again, covered in texta. They bolt into the bathroom, followed by W. A slams the door behind them. Hard. The door is faulty and is never shut, because it jams and can’t be opened. Right now, it is jammed at a very strange angle.
‘Oh nooooo,’ I wail down the phone. ‘I really have to go now.’
I tell the Husband he should shop as long as he can. One of us might as well be sane tonight.
I peer through the crack in the doorway at the boys. F and A’s faces are worse than W’s. They are all giggling madly.
‘I’ll open the window and we’ll all climb out,’ announces F.
‘NO!’
It takes me roughly 15 minutes to get the door open. It feels much longer.
I catch the boys as they pour out enthusiastically.
‘I thought we were going to be stuck FOREVER!’
‘I need to wash your faces.’
I do A and W first. It takes a long time. The boys giggle as I come to F. He rolls up his sleeves.
‘Look!’
‘He did his willy, too,’ says A.
‘And his bum,’ echoes W.
I inspect his handiwork and grimly deposit him in the shower.
After all the boys have been cleaned up, I feel slightly bad. They were being creative. They were naughty for using texta, but what if I had face paint? I am inspired. I dig out a few old lipsticks I never use. I take them into the backyard and tell the boys they can use them to paint their faces.
‘This is make-up,’ I say. ‘It’s MEANT for faces.’
Ten minutes later, the boys visit me in the lounge room. I regret my decision. A has covered his entire face in glitter-flecked orangey bronze lipstick. He shimmers as he bounces excitedly before me.
‘I look CHINESE!’ he shouts.
I haven’t seen any Chinese people with glittery bronze faces, but I am too gobsmacked to respond. This time, it’s my fault. He has also helped himself to my mascara, which he has used to paint his eyebrows.
I let them dance about in front of my bedroom mirror for as long as I can stand it. I take a group photo, then summon them to the bathroom for another round of scrubbing. They emerge with raw red faces. I leave A until last. I takes a very, very long time. When I finish, his eyebrows are still tinged with glowing orange, as is his hairline. I can’t help laughing. He looks vaguely demonic.
'I’ll have another go later,’ I tell him.
He runs off, grateful for an end to his ordeal.
I return to my book. A soon appears before me, sniffing and rubbing his shoulder. His other hand grips a light sabre.
‘F hit me.’
I yell for F. He appears, wielding his own light sabre.
‘Did you hit A?’ I demand.
‘It was an accident.’
I look at the light sabres.
‘Did he hit you with the light sabre?’ A nods.
‘Were you having a light sabre duel?’ He nods again.
‘Was it an accident?’ Another nod.
I dismiss them.
There is lots of to-ing and fro-ing from the yard, F’s bedroom and the study. There are squabbles over using W’s red light sabre. (‘It’s mine, and I want my brother to use it, not F.’ I allow this.) Half an hour later, there is a squabble over F’s green light sabre. (‘I want my brother to use it,’ says A. I don’t allow this.) There are tears when F adds something to W’s picture. I tell him off. A leans over and adds something.
‘SEE!’ yells F. ‘A did it!’
W sniffs.
‘He’s allowed to,’ he says.
‘Oh, and you don’t like me. I get it.’
‘I do. You’re my friend,’ says W solemnly. ‘But he’s my BROTHER.’ He shoots A a worshipful glance. It seems that the old F-A alliance has shifted in favour of a brotherly one, today.
When The Mother arrives to pick up the boys, she asks how they were.
‘Oh, you know,’ I reply. ‘They were, um, interesting. You know how boys can be. There was a bit of fighting, and F was pretty naughty. But it was okay.’
***
I have a blissful day on Friday, my birthday. After the early morning festivities, I drop F at the Mother’s soon after 9am, telling him to treat The Mother with respect and do as she says. The Husband and I spend the day eating, shopping and lazing about.
At 6pm, I arrive at The Mother’s. She leads me into the kitchen, where smoke is pouring from the griller. Forgotten toast. F and W are quiet, nestled under a sleeping bag before the TV. A is nowhere to be seen.
The other tells me that she has had a tough day. Apparently, A had a screaming tantrum when F wanted to play with his new toys. Didn’t even want him in his bedroom. He is asleep in the mother’s bed. They had an afternoon nap together while W and F watched a DVD.
Apparently, the boys were badly behaved at the Vic markets, this morning’s outing. They were giggling and pointing at a girl’s exposed muffin top as they walked behind her. Her friends overheard and turned around. They were shouting questions at passers by while The Mother was making purchases at a stall.
‘Well,’ I admit. ‘I guess I have seen F do that before. On Grand Final Day, he was stopping people in the street to ask if they were barracking for Eagles or Swans.’
The Mother doesn’t react.
‘And they’ve been talking about sex again,’ she continues. ‘They were teasing each other, saying they wanted to have sex with a girl at school. And they said something about boobs.’
I sigh and apologise.
‘Why do you think F is so obsessed with sex?’ she asks.
My mind whirrs. On Wednesday, A was just as bad as F on this topic. I wonder whether to mention this.
‘They were all talking about that a bit on Wednesday,’ I venture.
‘Mmm. It starts, then goes around in a circle, doesn’t it?’
‘I think it’s about having just learnt how babies are made and getting their heads around it,’ I offer, deliberately keeping it plural.
‘I think it’s because he’s so accelerated in his reading,’ she says, reprising her theory from a few weeks ago. ‘I mean, he can read anything, so who knows what he’s reading? He’s obviously reading beyond his age. Like that book he brought over.’ She gestures at a nearby table, where Andy Griffiths’ The Bad Book sits. ‘It’s totally inappropriate and very rude. It’s all about bums and things.’
I am momentarily floored. I didn’t really think when I put the book in his bag, but now it seems obvious that that was a bad decision.
‘(My husband) bought some marvel comics the other day,’ she continues. ‘They were aimed at eight-year-olds, I think, but we couldn’t believe it. There was some very suggestive stuff in there between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Not explicit, but you know, implied. F must read that stuff. Maybe that’s where he gets it.’
I reiterate that I think it’s Where Did I Come From? that’s the influence, but she ignores me.
Then she makes the comment about how F’s problem is obviously his personality. I call F and find his shoes. We make small talk while I tie his laces and tell myself furiously that I have HAD ENOUGH. The Mother wishes me a happy birthday and gives me a plate of biscuits on the way out.
As we ride home, I lecture F about respect and lack of it and furiously interrogate him about his day.
‘A wouldn’t let me play with any of his toys,’ he complains. ‘He was angry that I was in his room, so he said: “you want to sex with X”.'
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said he wanted to sex with her.’
I give him the talk about appropriate language and ‘it’s for adults’ and ‘just because he said it, doesn’t mean you should’. I tell him that the Mother now thinks he’s a rude child and that it doesn’t seem that he’ll be welcome there again. I tell him that his bad behaviour is not a nice birthday present for me.
The Husband greets us at the door. I fill him in. I am confused. I don’t quite know who I should be angry with about what and to what degree.
‘That’s f**ked,’ he says. ‘What a bitch.’
‘He’s not playing there again, even if he is invited,’ I decide. ‘I can’t take more of this. And they don’t play well together anymore.’
The Husband takes F by the shoulders.
‘Mate,’ he says. ‘No matter what (The Mother) says, you’re a great kid. We think you’re great.’ He hugs him.
‘Your behaviour today was not great,’ I add. ‘But you are.’ I apologise about my comment about his behaviour and my birthday, and he cheerily accepts.
I’m left feeling more confused than ever and pretty sure I haven’t handled this entirely well.
F**k it. It’s my birthday.
We all go out to dinner, to a local place we know F likes a lot, and I read him stories while we wait for our meals, holding him very close on my lap.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Why the holiday season is working for me
An antidote to my earlier self-indulgent black rant, in no particular order
1. Spending lots of lazy time with my soon-to-be-gone husband and soon-to-be-left-behind child.
2. Lots of reading time. And new books to read.
3. Enjoying F’s excitement on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Leaving a carrot for the reindeer and a cookie, a white wine (in F’s favourite cup), and a candy cane for Santa. And a note, written across the back of three carefully lined up business cards: ‘Dear Santa, have I been good? Write your answer here (arrow pointing to the side) with this texta (arrow pointing below).’ The answer card was topped with ‘Dear F’, with ‘Love Santa’ at the bottom, and a blank space in the middle. My husband wrote Santa’s answer in old-fashioned cursive, so F wouldn’t recognise our handwriting. When F examined it in the morning (‘He left crumbs! He ate it! This PROVES that Santa exists!’), he exclaimed that Santa’s writing was just like his teacher’s.
4. My First iPod – a birthday present from the Husband. I have been mumbling about not needing new-fangled technology to listen to music and consumerism and ‘boy’s toys’ for a while. I didn’t realise until Birthday Morning that I wanted one, too. I went for an hour-long walk with the dogs in the park yesterday with my new toy and I’m determined to keep it up. What a thoughtful and very cool present. Much better than the year he bought me underwear, including a much-hated G-string, for my birthday. (That was, admittedly, In The Beginning.)
5. A very pleasant birthday spent with the Husband in which he thoroughly spoilt me and let me choose everywhere I wanted to eat and everything I wanted to do, while F was playing at his friend’s house. The gelati at Gelo Bar on Lygon Street was a highlight. Simple girl, simple pleasures.
6. Really enjoying F’s company (when he’s not giving me attitude or behaving appallingly with other young’uns). I just like hanging out with him. He’s interesting. He makes surprising observations. He’s affectionate. He makes me laugh. We spent Thursday picking up mail from the post office, sharing brunch at a local café while I told him stories about when he was little and then read to him from his new books (received in the mail), shopping together for groceries and then a backpack for me, lying on my bed eating toast and reading books (me mine, him his), napping in my bed, and then a quite well-behaved play date/sleepover with his younger ‘cousin’ (actually my mother-in-law’s foster child).
7. Going to Adelaide in three weeks, where I will FINALLY catch up with all my family, who I haven’t seen since March. Mum has promised to make me a lemon meringue pie as a belated birthday cake. A week is not really long enough to rotate between four houses (Mum’s, Dad’s, brother’s, sisters’) but it’s something. And I am well aware that I always romanticise my relationship with my family in their absence, yet after a prolonged stay I’m usually ready to head home. One heavily divided week will keep the romance alive …
8. Backyard BBQs with friends that stretch long into the night, with no work to worry about in the morning.
9. Eating two excellent roast dinners in one day (Christmas Day), followed by an intoxicated night of Trivial Pursuit and Christmas lollies at a friend’s house, while F slept over at my mother-in-law’s with his ‘cousin’.
10. Did I mention all the lazy time with my loved ones? And, yes, there is excitement about the impending Big Trip, combined with a sense of unreality. I think that part of me doesn’t believe it will really happen. But the tickets are booked, the job is (nearly) left and F’s extended time with his dad is arranged … I guess that means I’m going!
1. Spending lots of lazy time with my soon-to-be-gone husband and soon-to-be-left-behind child.
2. Lots of reading time. And new books to read.
3. Enjoying F’s excitement on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Leaving a carrot for the reindeer and a cookie, a white wine (in F’s favourite cup), and a candy cane for Santa. And a note, written across the back of three carefully lined up business cards: ‘Dear Santa, have I been good? Write your answer here (arrow pointing to the side) with this texta (arrow pointing below).’ The answer card was topped with ‘Dear F’, with ‘Love Santa’ at the bottom, and a blank space in the middle. My husband wrote Santa’s answer in old-fashioned cursive, so F wouldn’t recognise our handwriting. When F examined it in the morning (‘He left crumbs! He ate it! This PROVES that Santa exists!’), he exclaimed that Santa’s writing was just like his teacher’s.
4. My First iPod – a birthday present from the Husband. I have been mumbling about not needing new-fangled technology to listen to music and consumerism and ‘boy’s toys’ for a while. I didn’t realise until Birthday Morning that I wanted one, too. I went for an hour-long walk with the dogs in the park yesterday with my new toy and I’m determined to keep it up. What a thoughtful and very cool present. Much better than the year he bought me underwear, including a much-hated G-string, for my birthday. (That was, admittedly, In The Beginning.)
5. A very pleasant birthday spent with the Husband in which he thoroughly spoilt me and let me choose everywhere I wanted to eat and everything I wanted to do, while F was playing at his friend’s house. The gelati at Gelo Bar on Lygon Street was a highlight. Simple girl, simple pleasures.
6. Really enjoying F’s company (when he’s not giving me attitude or behaving appallingly with other young’uns). I just like hanging out with him. He’s interesting. He makes surprising observations. He’s affectionate. He makes me laugh. We spent Thursday picking up mail from the post office, sharing brunch at a local café while I told him stories about when he was little and then read to him from his new books (received in the mail), shopping together for groceries and then a backpack for me, lying on my bed eating toast and reading books (me mine, him his), napping in my bed, and then a quite well-behaved play date/sleepover with his younger ‘cousin’ (actually my mother-in-law’s foster child).
7. Going to Adelaide in three weeks, where I will FINALLY catch up with all my family, who I haven’t seen since March. Mum has promised to make me a lemon meringue pie as a belated birthday cake. A week is not really long enough to rotate between four houses (Mum’s, Dad’s, brother’s, sisters’) but it’s something. And I am well aware that I always romanticise my relationship with my family in their absence, yet after a prolonged stay I’m usually ready to head home. One heavily divided week will keep the romance alive …
8. Backyard BBQs with friends that stretch long into the night, with no work to worry about in the morning.
9. Eating two excellent roast dinners in one day (Christmas Day), followed by an intoxicated night of Trivial Pursuit and Christmas lollies at a friend’s house, while F slept over at my mother-in-law’s with his ‘cousin’.
10. Did I mention all the lazy time with my loved ones? And, yes, there is excitement about the impending Big Trip, combined with a sense of unreality. I think that part of me doesn’t believe it will really happen. But the tickets are booked, the job is (nearly) left and F’s extended time with his dad is arranged … I guess that means I’m going!
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Why the holiday season is not working for me
Warning: self-indulgent black mood ahead …
1. F’s play dates are not working out well. Something to do with a disinclination to share Christmas toys by all parties, sugar overloads all round, childish hubris generated by the recent avalanche of gifts, and F’s current ‘phase’. At least I hope it’s a phase. *sigh* My birthday present yesterday was picking him up from a friend’s house to get a long tale about bad behaviour (which mirrored my experience of this trio of children earlier in the week), ended by the observation that F's problem is probably ‘his personality’. A play date he won’t be having again …
2. Apprehension about returning to work.
3. Fear of having no work after impending three-week training-my-replacement period is over. What if I can’t find a job (or at least, one that suits me more than the one I’ve given up) when I return from overseas? My friends and husband tell me of course you'll find a job. But how do they know? And, yes, this is entirely self-inflicted.
4. Rising panic at the thought of leaving my son for two months (okay, seven weeks) very, very soon while I gallivant off overseas. (What if his behavioural problems worsen? What if he misses me too much and feels abandoned? What if he forgets me and prefers his dad when I return? What if he changes while I’m away, with no input from me?)
5. Rising panic at thought of being all alone while husband is overseas for six out of the following twelve months. I’ve been all alone in the inner city with single friends and excellent PT. But all alone in suburbia with crap access to public transport and no single friends left – and working from home – seems different. (Actually, I do have one single friend but he’s an ardent clubber and I’m too tired for that.)
6. I miss my family in Adelaide. Usually I would have seen them by now at this time of year. In-laws are not the same, even if mine are very nice.
7. Apathy. Too much to do and not enough energy to do it all.
8. Deep concern about my parenting skills. Why did F have his biggest tantrum ever this week? Why is he such a smart-mouth at the moment? It FEELS like I’m always disciplining him. What else can I take away after pocket money, Lego, Bionicles, Exoforce (new Lego), dessert and any junk food or sweets whatsoever?!? What I would like is to have an independent observer come in and invisibly watch me for a week or two and then give me an unbiased opinion on what I’m doing wrong (and right) and what to do next. Of course, they’d have to share my values and broad philosophy of parenting.
9. Crappy Melbourne weather – hail, rain, smoke haze and lack of warmth. It’s hot in Adelaide, dammit.
10. Awareness that I am being a self-indulgent grump and there are plenty of people worse off than me. Including me a few years ago.
1. F’s play dates are not working out well. Something to do with a disinclination to share Christmas toys by all parties, sugar overloads all round, childish hubris generated by the recent avalanche of gifts, and F’s current ‘phase’. At least I hope it’s a phase. *sigh* My birthday present yesterday was picking him up from a friend’s house to get a long tale about bad behaviour (which mirrored my experience of this trio of children earlier in the week), ended by the observation that F's problem is probably ‘his personality’. A play date he won’t be having again …
2. Apprehension about returning to work.
3. Fear of having no work after impending three-week training-my-replacement period is over. What if I can’t find a job (or at least, one that suits me more than the one I’ve given up) when I return from overseas? My friends and husband tell me of course you'll find a job. But how do they know? And, yes, this is entirely self-inflicted.
4. Rising panic at the thought of leaving my son for two months (okay, seven weeks) very, very soon while I gallivant off overseas. (What if his behavioural problems worsen? What if he misses me too much and feels abandoned? What if he forgets me and prefers his dad when I return? What if he changes while I’m away, with no input from me?)
5. Rising panic at thought of being all alone while husband is overseas for six out of the following twelve months. I’ve been all alone in the inner city with single friends and excellent PT. But all alone in suburbia with crap access to public transport and no single friends left – and working from home – seems different. (Actually, I do have one single friend but he’s an ardent clubber and I’m too tired for that.)
6. I miss my family in Adelaide. Usually I would have seen them by now at this time of year. In-laws are not the same, even if mine are very nice.
7. Apathy. Too much to do and not enough energy to do it all.
8. Deep concern about my parenting skills. Why did F have his biggest tantrum ever this week? Why is he such a smart-mouth at the moment? It FEELS like I’m always disciplining him. What else can I take away after pocket money, Lego, Bionicles, Exoforce (new Lego), dessert and any junk food or sweets whatsoever?!? What I would like is to have an independent observer come in and invisibly watch me for a week or two and then give me an unbiased opinion on what I’m doing wrong (and right) and what to do next. Of course, they’d have to share my values and broad philosophy of parenting.
9. Crappy Melbourne weather – hail, rain, smoke haze and lack of warmth. It’s hot in Adelaide, dammit.
10. Awareness that I am being a self-indulgent grump and there are plenty of people worse off than me. Including me a few years ago.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
The drug of a nation
A very fun TV meme from Elsewhere (and picked up up by Kate before me):
1. Earliest remembered television?
The first thing that pops into my head is coming home from school and watching Bewitched with Mum. How I loved Bewitched … But sensibly, I think Play School and Sesame Street were my introduction to television. I have a brilliant 1970s-era record of the Sesame Street cast album, with everyone boogying on a New York Street. Lots of afros and flares. I was so excited when F was old enough that I could pass it on to him.
2. TV series you would want on a desert island?
If I landed there tomorrow: Veronica Mars, my current TV obsession. Series 2, because I haven’t seen it all. My cousins gave me a downloaded version of Series 1 as a ‘joke’ wedding present, because they knew I was incredibly jealous that they had it (I’d managed to grab the odd episode last summer). I actually squealed when they gave it to me! I’m slightly ashamed to say (because it’s so unromantic and kinda wrong), but my husband I watched the whole series in two (or maybe – hopefully – three?) days on our honeymoon, with the odd trip to the beach in between. Veronica is like a cross between Buffy (whip-smart, kick-ass cute blonde who ends up taking of everyone around her) and Agent Cooper (eccentric detective extraordinaire) , with a *tiny* pinch of Donna Hayward (who I never liked all that much) - just with the whole solving-your-best-friend’s-murder thing. And her dad is brilliant. And love a good love triangle/URST (unresolved sexual tension). I have proved that I can watch Twin Peaks over and over again, though.
3. TV that made you laugh
Frontline. You gotta love a show that actually managed to damage the credibility of the genre it was satirising. The humour was so sharp, and often so bittersweet. Liked the way you ended up loving the villains of the piece (the producers, Marty if you think about it) – always a sign of clever storytelling. And I was a media student when it was showing on TV – I soooo wanted to be Emma, the incredibly clever (if under-appreciated and nearly always undermined) producer. I’ve discovered Scrubs this year and fallen in love with it. Just hilarious. Packed with witty one-liners and some great characters. Zach Braff is brilliant and I love his relationship with superficially-gruff-but-goodhearted Dr Cox. I think I’ll have a new appreciation for Garden State if I watch it again now (Braff’s self-penned film about a misanthropic actor who returns to his small town for a visit and resents the recognition he gets for the sitcom he was in). Yes Minister. The Office. Thank God You’re Here: the segments with Hamish Blake and Angus Sampson.
4. TV that made you cry – SPOILER ALERT – Love My Way
Love My Way, for my hands-down worst crying episode at anything fictional. I was watching the dvd and I had to turn it off and take a break. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed as if my heart would break (cliché I know, but I don’t care). I needed tissues. Lots of them. I can’t stand anything where a child is hurt or endangered – something that happened to me pretty much as soon as I had my son (I learnt the hard way, watching Sophie’s Choice on midday TV while breastfeeding). So, to have a child die, unexpectedly, in the middle of the series, absolutely shattered me. It got me in a very deep, primal way. Whoah. Especially, I guess, because I identified so much with Claudia’s character. (No, I don’t LOOK like that.) I share custody with my ex, we have a seven-year-old child, he and his wife had a new baby this year, we organise our custody in the way they did on the show, before I met my current husband, my son and I lived with an old friend of mine WHO WAS A CHEF and it fell apart partly due to a longstanding unrequited crush. It disturbed me for days. I also cried with happiness when Laura and Max finally got together on Sea Change. (I loved Sea Change and had the BIGGEST crush on Diver, then EVEN BIGGER on Max.) I also cried all afternoon once after a news story on selfish women who work while their children suffer without them. Snotty, semi-luxurious, reclining-on-my-pillows crying. Oddly, it was the week before I returned to full-time work … Probably lots more but I’ll stop there. I am a BIG sook.
5. TV crap that you enjoy.
Hmmm. Embarrassing. I am a crapmeister. (I was worse when we briefly had Foxtel.) I did enjoy Australian Idol, not so much this season, though I liked Bobby Flynn. I actually prefer American Idol. It’s the judges: Simon Cowell is hilarious and there’s some weird sexual chemistry going on between him and Paula Abdul. And my god, unlike Marcia Hines, though she is ‘the nice judge’, she actually SAYS WHAT SHE THINKS. Aaargh! Oz Idol needs Dicko to come back. I was hooked on Australian Princess last year, but haven’t really watched it this year. True confession time: I was into Neighbours and sternly told myself not to watch it anymore because it truly is crap, and I shouldn’t be watching TV at that time. That was three months ago and I haven’t watched it since. I just liked Evil Izzy and Scheming Paul. And Dr Karl when he was an alcoholic skirt-chaser. Moving right along …
6. TV you'll never forget.
Love My Way: episode where the child dies. See above. Also, an SBS doco that aired a few weeks ago, followed a 14-year-old girl working in a jeans factory in China. I turned it on about a quarter of the way through, but was riveted. It was almost more disturbing because the workers WEREN’T starving to death and didn’t live or work in barely lit shacks where there was no room to move. They weren’t forced to have sex with their employers or beaten for not working fast enough. The girls worked all night to finish big orders. They fell asleep on their desks and were prodded awake. They ate shitty dormitory food. They lived in shitty dormitories. They were paid badly, and pay was withheld as ‘bond’ for the first few months so that if they left, they would lose it. Many of them, like this girl, were kids who missed their families badly, and had been pulled out of work for this. The boss – the factory owner - was interviewed and he spoke about the need to control his lazy workers, etc. He seemed selfish and comparatively privileged. But he didn’t live much better than a lot of us. They also showed the owner in meetings with foreign buyers (aka People Like Us – Western movers and shakers) and you saw the way they squeezed him for every cent they could get, and pushed him as hard as they could on delivery. It’s not about evil Chinese factory owners: it’s about greedy Western business people, who get far more out the deal than they do. They cancel orders if they’re late – and set ridiculous schedules. And we wonder why poor 14-year-old girls work 18 hour days?
7. Favourite TV adaptation.
Have to say, I loved the BBC Pride and Prejudice. Colin Firth was a damned good Darcy. (He had the whole disturbed but brilliant and secretly lovely Angry Young man thing going on.) And Jennifer Ehle a suitably spunky Elizabeth Bennett. The recent BBC Vanity Fair with Natasha Little was also wonderful. What a fabulous Becky Sharp! And I thoroughly enjoyed the version of The Alan Clark Diaries shown this year, with John Hurt as the horrid little self-important Thatcher-boot-licking (or navy pump-licking) Conservative politician. So very, very funny. I do reserve a special space in my heart, though, for the (BBC again) adaptation of The Secret Garden, a major milestone in my love of reading. I fell in love with it when I was about six, watching it after school on the ABC, and I was absolutely dying to read the book. Mum LOVES the story of how she took me to Myer and the sales assistant solemnly handed me the Ladybird version of the book. I looked at it and said ‘no, I want the REAL book’. She explained that I wouldn’t be able to read it, and Mum told her that I was really a very good reader and I would be fine. The Myer bookshop lady, exasperated with Mum by now and (Mum thinks) sure that she was a horrid stage mother, handed me the book and said in condescending tones: ‘There you are dear, read it to me’, shooting Mum a presciently (she thought) triumphant look. And then I started to read aloud – perfectly fluently – and the woman apologised profusely and gave me the book. Which I read several times since and still have.
7. Favourite nerdish program
Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. I remember watching them after dinner with my dad, who was a fan. Later, I remember reading the collected scripts from Dad’s bookshelves. And then surreptitiously nicking them when I left home. And I am looking at them now. My husband bought me the whole two series on DVD and I re-watched them all. Still so sharp and funny and utterly relevant. And Nigel Hawthorne as Sir Humphrey … golden. And I was a BIG Twin Peaks nerd. I have a book of critical essays on Twin Peaks.
8. One TV program you are currently watching.
Love My Way Series 2. Veronica Mars Series 2. Smallville, intermittently. Partly because it's summer, partly because I'm watching Good Lex evolve into Evil Lex.
9. One TV show/series you have been meaning to watch
Um, Buffy. Of course I've seen it, but only intermittently. I really got into some of the narratives, but then missed the start of others. I think the narrative is often what gets me hooked. One day I'm going to hire the first series on DVD, and watch it sequentially. And Weeds.
10. Now tag five people.
Tag! You’re it, if you want to be. If not, you got away. Or you can say ‘barleys’ and then you’ve got immunity. (I don’t know why – it was a 1980s schoolyard thing.)
1. Earliest remembered television?
The first thing that pops into my head is coming home from school and watching Bewitched with Mum. How I loved Bewitched … But sensibly, I think Play School and Sesame Street were my introduction to television. I have a brilliant 1970s-era record of the Sesame Street cast album, with everyone boogying on a New York Street. Lots of afros and flares. I was so excited when F was old enough that I could pass it on to him.
2. TV series you would want on a desert island?
If I landed there tomorrow: Veronica Mars, my current TV obsession. Series 2, because I haven’t seen it all. My cousins gave me a downloaded version of Series 1 as a ‘joke’ wedding present, because they knew I was incredibly jealous that they had it (I’d managed to grab the odd episode last summer). I actually squealed when they gave it to me! I’m slightly ashamed to say (because it’s so unromantic and kinda wrong), but my husband I watched the whole series in two (or maybe – hopefully – three?) days on our honeymoon, with the odd trip to the beach in between. Veronica is like a cross between Buffy (whip-smart, kick-ass cute blonde who ends up taking of everyone around her) and Agent Cooper (eccentric detective extraordinaire) , with a *tiny* pinch of Donna Hayward (who I never liked all that much) - just with the whole solving-your-best-friend’s-murder thing. And her dad is brilliant. And love a good love triangle/URST (unresolved sexual tension). I have proved that I can watch Twin Peaks over and over again, though.
3. TV that made you laugh
Frontline. You gotta love a show that actually managed to damage the credibility of the genre it was satirising. The humour was so sharp, and often so bittersweet. Liked the way you ended up loving the villains of the piece (the producers, Marty if you think about it) – always a sign of clever storytelling. And I was a media student when it was showing on TV – I soooo wanted to be Emma, the incredibly clever (if under-appreciated and nearly always undermined) producer. I’ve discovered Scrubs this year and fallen in love with it. Just hilarious. Packed with witty one-liners and some great characters. Zach Braff is brilliant and I love his relationship with superficially-gruff-but-goodhearted Dr Cox. I think I’ll have a new appreciation for Garden State if I watch it again now (Braff’s self-penned film about a misanthropic actor who returns to his small town for a visit and resents the recognition he gets for the sitcom he was in). Yes Minister. The Office. Thank God You’re Here: the segments with Hamish Blake and Angus Sampson.
4. TV that made you cry – SPOILER ALERT – Love My Way
Love My Way, for my hands-down worst crying episode at anything fictional. I was watching the dvd and I had to turn it off and take a break. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed as if my heart would break (cliché I know, but I don’t care). I needed tissues. Lots of them. I can’t stand anything where a child is hurt or endangered – something that happened to me pretty much as soon as I had my son (I learnt the hard way, watching Sophie’s Choice on midday TV while breastfeeding). So, to have a child die, unexpectedly, in the middle of the series, absolutely shattered me. It got me in a very deep, primal way. Whoah. Especially, I guess, because I identified so much with Claudia’s character. (No, I don’t LOOK like that.) I share custody with my ex, we have a seven-year-old child, he and his wife had a new baby this year, we organise our custody in the way they did on the show, before I met my current husband, my son and I lived with an old friend of mine WHO WAS A CHEF and it fell apart partly due to a longstanding unrequited crush. It disturbed me for days. I also cried with happiness when Laura and Max finally got together on Sea Change. (I loved Sea Change and had the BIGGEST crush on Diver, then EVEN BIGGER on Max.) I also cried all afternoon once after a news story on selfish women who work while their children suffer without them. Snotty, semi-luxurious, reclining-on-my-pillows crying. Oddly, it was the week before I returned to full-time work … Probably lots more but I’ll stop there. I am a BIG sook.
5. TV crap that you enjoy.
Hmmm. Embarrassing. I am a crapmeister. (I was worse when we briefly had Foxtel.) I did enjoy Australian Idol, not so much this season, though I liked Bobby Flynn. I actually prefer American Idol. It’s the judges: Simon Cowell is hilarious and there’s some weird sexual chemistry going on between him and Paula Abdul. And my god, unlike Marcia Hines, though she is ‘the nice judge’, she actually SAYS WHAT SHE THINKS. Aaargh! Oz Idol needs Dicko to come back. I was hooked on Australian Princess last year, but haven’t really watched it this year. True confession time: I was into Neighbours and sternly told myself not to watch it anymore because it truly is crap, and I shouldn’t be watching TV at that time. That was three months ago and I haven’t watched it since. I just liked Evil Izzy and Scheming Paul. And Dr Karl when he was an alcoholic skirt-chaser. Moving right along …
6. TV you'll never forget.
Love My Way: episode where the child dies. See above. Also, an SBS doco that aired a few weeks ago, followed a 14-year-old girl working in a jeans factory in China. I turned it on about a quarter of the way through, but was riveted. It was almost more disturbing because the workers WEREN’T starving to death and didn’t live or work in barely lit shacks where there was no room to move. They weren’t forced to have sex with their employers or beaten for not working fast enough. The girls worked all night to finish big orders. They fell asleep on their desks and were prodded awake. They ate shitty dormitory food. They lived in shitty dormitories. They were paid badly, and pay was withheld as ‘bond’ for the first few months so that if they left, they would lose it. Many of them, like this girl, were kids who missed their families badly, and had been pulled out of work for this. The boss – the factory owner - was interviewed and he spoke about the need to control his lazy workers, etc. He seemed selfish and comparatively privileged. But he didn’t live much better than a lot of us. They also showed the owner in meetings with foreign buyers (aka People Like Us – Western movers and shakers) and you saw the way they squeezed him for every cent they could get, and pushed him as hard as they could on delivery. It’s not about evil Chinese factory owners: it’s about greedy Western business people, who get far more out the deal than they do. They cancel orders if they’re late – and set ridiculous schedules. And we wonder why poor 14-year-old girls work 18 hour days?
7. Favourite TV adaptation.
Have to say, I loved the BBC Pride and Prejudice. Colin Firth was a damned good Darcy. (He had the whole disturbed but brilliant and secretly lovely Angry Young man thing going on.) And Jennifer Ehle a suitably spunky Elizabeth Bennett. The recent BBC Vanity Fair with Natasha Little was also wonderful. What a fabulous Becky Sharp! And I thoroughly enjoyed the version of The Alan Clark Diaries shown this year, with John Hurt as the horrid little self-important Thatcher-boot-licking (or navy pump-licking) Conservative politician. So very, very funny. I do reserve a special space in my heart, though, for the (BBC again) adaptation of The Secret Garden, a major milestone in my love of reading. I fell in love with it when I was about six, watching it after school on the ABC, and I was absolutely dying to read the book. Mum LOVES the story of how she took me to Myer and the sales assistant solemnly handed me the Ladybird version of the book. I looked at it and said ‘no, I want the REAL book’. She explained that I wouldn’t be able to read it, and Mum told her that I was really a very good reader and I would be fine. The Myer bookshop lady, exasperated with Mum by now and (Mum thinks) sure that she was a horrid stage mother, handed me the book and said in condescending tones: ‘There you are dear, read it to me’, shooting Mum a presciently (she thought) triumphant look. And then I started to read aloud – perfectly fluently – and the woman apologised profusely and gave me the book. Which I read several times since and still have.
7. Favourite nerdish program
Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. I remember watching them after dinner with my dad, who was a fan. Later, I remember reading the collected scripts from Dad’s bookshelves. And then surreptitiously nicking them when I left home. And I am looking at them now. My husband bought me the whole two series on DVD and I re-watched them all. Still so sharp and funny and utterly relevant. And Nigel Hawthorne as Sir Humphrey … golden. And I was a BIG Twin Peaks nerd. I have a book of critical essays on Twin Peaks.
8. One TV program you are currently watching.
Love My Way Series 2. Veronica Mars Series 2. Smallville, intermittently. Partly because it's summer, partly because I'm watching Good Lex evolve into Evil Lex.
9. One TV show/series you have been meaning to watch
Um, Buffy. Of course I've seen it, but only intermittently. I really got into some of the narratives, but then missed the start of others. I think the narrative is often what gets me hooked. One day I'm going to hire the first series on DVD, and watch it sequentially. And Weeds.
10. Now tag five people.
Tag! You’re it, if you want to be. If not, you got away. Or you can say ‘barleys’ and then you’ve got immunity. (I don’t know why – it was a 1980s schoolyard thing.)
Monday, December 18, 2006
Keeping up with the Joneses
I hate the Sunday supplements. I buy the Sunday Age for the TV Guide in M Magazine. But, my god, it’s a vacuous piece of shit.
The (relatively new) editor, Michelle Griffin, is a respected literary journalist and a fine writer. She is incredibly intelligent. She seems to be a no-bullshit kind of person.
So, it is increasingly odd to me, after a long not-quite-acquaintance with her on the literary pages, to read her chirrupy little editorials. It’s not those that I have a problem with, though. (Hell, we all gotta earn a living.)
This week, there is an article on the ‘Homes’ pages that really pissed me off. It is about home cinemas:
What the hell? So, the obvious solution to annoying eaters in movie theatres is to build your own home cinema? What is wrong with these people? Who are they? The article takes pains to make them sound like your average, perhaps slightly well-to-do couple. (Note ‘western suburbs’)
Am I crazy, or is this sickening? It’s similar to when they first started advertising steel fridges with built-in televisions. It’s just so extreme.
This reminds me of my short-lived stint at an architecture and lifestyle magazine, where I was gently chided over a line in a book review. It was one of those ‘50 Houses’ type things, showcasing the best new architecture around the world. I’d written something about it giving readers the opportunity to tour fabulous homes that they could never afford ‘But isn’t it true?’ I asked. ‘Well, ye-es,’ I was told. ‘But the whole point of the magazine is for people to realise that everyone can afford an architect. And that sends the wrong message.’
I’m sorry, but if we’re all that rich, why don’t we have better public schools, public health, child care, public transport?
Or are those things less important than the dream of having your own home cinema? Designed by an architect, of course.
The (relatively new) editor, Michelle Griffin, is a respected literary journalist and a fine writer. She is incredibly intelligent. She seems to be a no-bullshit kind of person.
So, it is increasingly odd to me, after a long not-quite-acquaintance with her on the literary pages, to read her chirrupy little editorials. It’s not those that I have a problem with, though. (Hell, we all gotta earn a living.)
This week, there is an article on the ‘Homes’ pages that really pissed me off. It is about home cinemas:
Rodney Hearn is a born hi-fi and movie buff … He and his wife Anne are such avid cinema-goers that they pay for the gold-class experience. But even that edge of gilt-edged luxury isn’t quite enough for Hearn. “It’s very annoying to be watching a movie while someone is eating a three-course meal behind you,” he says. And it’s even worse in conventional movie theatres “with people behind you talking or rattling chips bags. How much of the movie do you actually get to see? That’s why the home theatre is cut out for people like the Hearns. They’re sinking $100,000 plus – their redundancy cheques – into creating a 9.5 metre by 6.5 metre home cinema on the back of their western suburbs home.
What the hell? So, the obvious solution to annoying eaters in movie theatres is to build your own home cinema? What is wrong with these people? Who are they? The article takes pains to make them sound like your average, perhaps slightly well-to-do couple. (Note ‘western suburbs’)
Their addiction is not as extreme as they might think. More and more people are forking out huge sums to set up a home theatre.Is this: theatres are the new swimming pools? Obviously designed to make people think that this is normal, that anyone can do it, that you might feel as if it’s something you can’t afford, but everyone’s doing it these days. So just get a loan, or whack it on the credit cards …
Why is the trend towards home cinemas intensifying? … “Deep down, people love the idea of having their own private cinema. It was once just a futuristic dream. Now all members of the family can have fun together, playing electronic games or watching movies on the big screen.”Oh, so it brings the family together. It’s an investment for the good of the kids.
If you build it, they will stay at home.
Am I crazy, or is this sickening? It’s similar to when they first started advertising steel fridges with built-in televisions. It’s just so extreme.
This reminds me of my short-lived stint at an architecture and lifestyle magazine, where I was gently chided over a line in a book review. It was one of those ‘50 Houses’ type things, showcasing the best new architecture around the world. I’d written something about it giving readers the opportunity to tour fabulous homes that they could never afford ‘But isn’t it true?’ I asked. ‘Well, ye-es,’ I was told. ‘But the whole point of the magazine is for people to realise that everyone can afford an architect. And that sends the wrong message.’
I’m sorry, but if we’re all that rich, why don’t we have better public schools, public health, child care, public transport?
Or are those things less important than the dream of having your own home cinema? Designed by an architect, of course.
Too much
On Sunday, I finally ventured out to do my Christmas shopping. Having slunk past the queues transfixed by the Myer Christmas windows, I elbowed my way through the crowds up five flights of escalators to the toy department … only to be stopped at the magical sixth escalator by a pair of security guards.
‘You can’t go up there.’
I and a handful of just-as-harassed-looking fellow shoppers made our way, as instructed, to the friendly lift lady. Who told us that the sixth floor was closed, and she was under instructions not to let anyone up there.
‘The queue to see Santa is a few hours long, anyway.’
‘But I don’t want to see Santa,’ I wailed. ‘I want to buy toooyyyys.’
‘One hour queue for that,’ she chirped, and I, grumpily, painfully aware that I had work to do this afternoon and all my Christmas shopping to do before I could get home to do it, was a bitch.
‘Well, fine then,’ I sulked. ‘I’ll go and spend my money somewhere else.’
The lift lady smiled, managed to look sympathetic, and waved me goodbye. She’d obviously dealt with sulky princesses like me before. As I walked off, I knew I was being unreasonable. More than that, I knew that a place that was actively turning customers away, that had security guards keeping them off the escalators, that had people queuing for an hour to hand over their money, would not care one bit whether I spent my money elsewhere.
They didn’t have the means to take my money anyway.
Yes, we have too much.
Still, as I wearily slumped from my fifth escalator on the way out, I paused to tell the information woman stationed there that if they’re not going to let people enter the sixth floor, they really should have a sign on the bottom floor to let them know.
‘Oh, they’re doing that again are they?’ she said, shaking her grey perm. ‘I was on the lifts yesterday when they did that.’ A knowing, wry smile. ‘I’m sorry love, but it’s just too much paperwork to get a sign made. It has to go though admin and then it has to be approved by management, and then by the time it gets down here … But I’ll be sure to let people know. Thank you.’
Random thought: the customer service at Myer is generally excellent. Maybe it’s partly because of the women approaching pension age who have learnt to handle annoying customers (like me) with grace. Good on them.
So, on concluding that as a society, we have too much, did I go home and hand-make gifts for my son?
No. I took my orgy of spending elsewhere. I went to Target, which was having 20% off toys, and gathered Lego, confetti glitter glue, a Wolfmother CD single, a Bionicles DVD and a comic book. (In the line, a customer handed me a spare 10% off everything voucher, an casual act of kindness that cheered me up a bit.) And then I went to AFL World and bought a West Coast Eagles cap and t-shirt.
I know he doesn’t need any of it, but it’s part of the whole Christmas ritual, and I’m stuck in it.
I’m too busy and distracted and generally frazzled by work and next year’s travel plans to do much about the problem of Christmas as a celebration of how spoilt we all are. I’m donating some children’s books to a worthy cause and taking F to choose a present for a charity Christmas tree. And my grandmother has asked for contributions of canned goods, pencils, paper, etc. to a woman she knows who is distributing these items to AIDS victims in Africa. So, thanks to her, there is that.
Maybe next year I’ll have a more creative and appropriate approach - though I’m pretty certain I’ll still be spending up big on things F doesn’t need, too. As, I know, my parents did for me.
‘You can’t go up there.’
I and a handful of just-as-harassed-looking fellow shoppers made our way, as instructed, to the friendly lift lady. Who told us that the sixth floor was closed, and she was under instructions not to let anyone up there.
‘The queue to see Santa is a few hours long, anyway.’
‘But I don’t want to see Santa,’ I wailed. ‘I want to buy toooyyyys.’
‘One hour queue for that,’ she chirped, and I, grumpily, painfully aware that I had work to do this afternoon and all my Christmas shopping to do before I could get home to do it, was a bitch.
‘Well, fine then,’ I sulked. ‘I’ll go and spend my money somewhere else.’
The lift lady smiled, managed to look sympathetic, and waved me goodbye. She’d obviously dealt with sulky princesses like me before. As I walked off, I knew I was being unreasonable. More than that, I knew that a place that was actively turning customers away, that had security guards keeping them off the escalators, that had people queuing for an hour to hand over their money, would not care one bit whether I spent my money elsewhere.
They didn’t have the means to take my money anyway.
Yes, we have too much.
Still, as I wearily slumped from my fifth escalator on the way out, I paused to tell the information woman stationed there that if they’re not going to let people enter the sixth floor, they really should have a sign on the bottom floor to let them know.
‘Oh, they’re doing that again are they?’ she said, shaking her grey perm. ‘I was on the lifts yesterday when they did that.’ A knowing, wry smile. ‘I’m sorry love, but it’s just too much paperwork to get a sign made. It has to go though admin and then it has to be approved by management, and then by the time it gets down here … But I’ll be sure to let people know. Thank you.’
Random thought: the customer service at Myer is generally excellent. Maybe it’s partly because of the women approaching pension age who have learnt to handle annoying customers (like me) with grace. Good on them.
So, on concluding that as a society, we have too much, did I go home and hand-make gifts for my son?
No. I took my orgy of spending elsewhere. I went to Target, which was having 20% off toys, and gathered Lego, confetti glitter glue, a Wolfmother CD single, a Bionicles DVD and a comic book. (In the line, a customer handed me a spare 10% off everything voucher, an casual act of kindness that cheered me up a bit.) And then I went to AFL World and bought a West Coast Eagles cap and t-shirt.
I know he doesn’t need any of it, but it’s part of the whole Christmas ritual, and I’m stuck in it.
I’m too busy and distracted and generally frazzled by work and next year’s travel plans to do much about the problem of Christmas as a celebration of how spoilt we all are. I’m donating some children’s books to a worthy cause and taking F to choose a present for a charity Christmas tree. And my grandmother has asked for contributions of canned goods, pencils, paper, etc. to a woman she knows who is distributing these items to AIDS victims in Africa. So, thanks to her, there is that.
Maybe next year I’ll have a more creative and appropriate approach - though I’m pretty certain I’ll still be spending up big on things F doesn’t need, too. As, I know, my parents did for me.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Hell is other parents. Part One.
I’ve had a bad parenting week.
Partially due to the Boy, who pulled his pants down in the playground AGAIN, forcing me to carry through with my ill-conceived threat to write to Santa and tell him ‘No Bionicles for Christmas’. This was Wednesday.
Monday, after spending the morning throwing up (no, I’m not pregnant) and the day at work feeling weak and dizzy, I arrive at After Care deep in brain fog. They look puzzled to see me. ‘F’s not here,’ they say. I panic. ‘Could someone else have picked him up?’ They couldn’t. His father and stepfather are both at work. Where could he be? What could have happened? Then I remember. On Mondays, he plays at a friend’s house after school. More than a little embarrassed, I reassure the worried-looking carer that I know where he is, I’d just forgotten, and head for the friend’s house.
‘You’re early,’ the Mother greets me at the door. ‘Are you okay? You look terrible.’ I feel terrible, and I’m about to feel worse. She pulls me into the ‘good’ sitting room, the one they don’t use, to tell me about her afternoon. Apparently, she’d overhead F saying something about sucking a woman’s breast on the way home and told him that if she ever heard anything like that again, he is no longer welcome at the house. ‘I like F,’ she said. ‘But A is innocent, and I’d like to keep him that way. I let him watch The Blues Brothers, but that’s about it. I don’t mean to judge, but I don’t know where F has picked that up from. Do you? He’s a very advanced reader, so maybe he read it somewhere?’ (Yeah, like all those Playboys I keep in my bottom drawer?!) I apologise, and assure her I will investigate and give F a thorough talking to. ‘I mean, it was one thing when he told A about how babies were made last week,’ she continues. ‘I didn’t really mind that, but … I didn’t really want him to know about it, but what can you do? I did have to put up with him saying penis and vagina all weekend, but … but that was okay, I guess.’ I still remember the look on her face last week when I told her that I’d overhead them having The Talk. I slink off to collect my wayward son.
‘What exactly did you say?’ I ask him as we walk home across the park.
‘I said that Supergirl was the stupidest movie I’d ever seen and A said Supergirl was beautiful. So I asked him if he wanted to suck Supergirl’s breast.’
‘Where did you get that from?’
‘From when you get born,’ he chirps. ‘You know, breastfeeding.’ His stepmother is breastfeeding. I breathe a huge sigh of relief and tell him to never say anything like that again.
Back to Wednesday. Wednesday is the day that A comes to play at our house. He’s a nice kid, and they play well together, but they also like to dob on each other. I have a rule: I don’t want to hear about it unless someone is hurt, someone is in danger or about to get hurt, or something is being wrecked. I find A before I find F.
‘My mum told me I have to tell you every time F says something rude,’ he tells me.
‘Great,’ I say, through clenched teeth.
I read F’s Communication Book outside his classroom. He has spent the afternoon in the office for pulling his pants down. I find his teacher. We talk. I find the vice principal. We talk, while F and A play in the corridor outside her office. I am almost in tears.
‘He keeps doing it because it makes the other children laugh,’ she says. ‘But they don’t laugh so much anymore. They think it’s weird.’ I nod and agree. I tell her what I’ve been doing, and ask her what she suggests. Then she says something that really brings me to the edge of tears.
‘F is a great kid,’ she says. ‘He’s come so far this year. We’ve told him we’re really proud of him. He’s incredibly smart, and sometimes that causes problems. But I love having him around.’
‘Really?’ I say. ‘You do?’
I’ve spent the year worrying that they don’t like him.
I feel slightly better as I walk the boys home. I tell F that if he does it again, I will give all his Bionicles to my mother-in-law’s foster child, J.
‘Who’s that?’ asks A.
‘His cousin,’ I say. It’s what F has taken to calling him, and it’s easier than explaining. I go to the newsagent on the way home and buy glitter glue, textas, paintbrushes. The boys play best when they are drawing together.
I push my bike, loaded with art supplies, through the hot, smoggy park. A lags behind.
F points to the wall along the power station.
‘That’s graffiti,’ he says. ‘S says when he grows up, he wants to write graffiti.’ The boys giggle naughtily. F whispers something.
‘Excuse me,’ says A. ‘F said when he grows up, he wants to sniff vaginas.’
‘WHAT?’ I am furious. I interrogate the boys. I turns out that F said he wanted to sniff bums. Okay, bad, but Andy Griffiths rather than Hugh Hefner territory. A just wanted to say vagina. I growl at them both. I am hot, my throat hurts, my eyes sting, and my arm is sore from pushing the bike for so long.
At the front gate, A taps my arm.
‘Excuse me,’ he says. ‘F said that daisy was stupid.’
I look at him.
‘And stupid is a bad word?’
He nods.
‘Okay,’ I say. I lock up my bike and entertain thoughts of killing the Mother, who has condemned me to what is already a long and painful afternoon.
I am cutting up honey toast and apples at the kitchen table. A comes to fetch his carton of Ribena, and stays to watch. He is thoughtful.
‘So, if F is rude again, his cousin gets all his Bionicles?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’ He pauses. ‘You know, you could give them to me.’
‘That’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think so,’ I say, envisaging even more dobbing in a plot to gain F’s Bionicles. I also envisage the end of the friendship.
‘Oh.’ He takes a slice of apple. ‘You could give half to me, half to his cousin?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe I could have just one?’
I snap. ‘A, if I was to give you F’s Bionicles if he was rude, you’d tell me was rude, wouldn’t you? So, I don’t think it’s a good idea. They’ll go to his cousin. And hopefully, F will be good.’
‘I won’t say he’s rude.’
‘No.’
The Mother is due between 5.30pm and 6pm. At 6.10pm, she hasn’t arrived. I want this to be over. I have a headache with trying to work out who is really being rude, who is making up stories, who actually deserves to be told off, and how to explain that I don’t really care if someone said ‘bloody’. There are just as many complaints about 'innocent' A as about F. Next week, I plan to revert to my rule.
The Mother arrives at 6.30pm, breezily. She has, as usual, brought A’s little brother. The three boys shoot out into the backyard for a light sabre duel. I want her to go. I am too angry and tired to deal with her. The Husband shoots her a look and disappears. He is furious, as is F’s father, about the fuss. They think she is a prude. F’s father actually came out with a killer of a line when I told him how upset she was about the sex ed, and penis and vagina. ‘What would she prefer?’ he said, icily. ‘That A goes around saying prick and cunt?’
The Mother deals with the frosty atmosphere by settling in for the long haul, to show that we are friends and everything is okay. She talks and talks. She follows the boys out the back and comments on the progress of the light sabre duels. She tells me about a meal she made recently, and gives me the recipe, step by step. She asks for lemons from the tree. She tells me that she wants to make lemon butter. She gives me a recipe for lemon butter. She tells me that the great thing to do with lemon butter is to make a pudding. She gives me the recipe. She tells me how nice the lemon tree is, and about her lemon tree, and about her friend’s lemon tree, and what her friend does with lemons, and how her mother propagates fruit trees, and how she herself does it. It is 7pm. She asks me, finally, about the sucking breasts thing. I tell her about the breastfeeding and she is surprised and relieved. She tells me, again, that she wishes A hadn’t been told the facts of life. She tells me, again, that he’s been saying vagina. That she was doing the ironing, and he said ‘Mum, you have a vagina, don’t you?’
At 7.30pm, she finally leaves. At the door, she grabs my arm and asks, ‘Are you doing anything right now?’ I need to cook dinner, serve dinner, bath F, get him into his PJs, put him to bed and read him a story. By 8.30pm. And then I need to write and research an article.
‘Why?’
‘A is missing his bike,’ she says. (He left it here last week.) ‘Can you walk him to the park so he can ride it home?’
‘Okay.’ I just want it to all be over. A asks if F can come. I say no, too sharply. I say that F will walk home too slowly and I need to start dinner soon, an edge of resentment in my voice. As we trudge to the end of the driveway, the Mother grabs my arm again.
‘Hey!’ she says. ‘Come here!’ And she gives me a hug. I smile weakly and wave goodbye.
‘Why does F like Bionicles so much?’ asks A.
‘I don’t know.’ I try to be upbeat and friendly, overcompensating. ‘I guess he just does.’
‘I don’t,’ says A. ‘I like superheroes.’ And with that, he climbs onto his bike and pedals off down the hill, me jogging behind.
Partially due to the Boy, who pulled his pants down in the playground AGAIN, forcing me to carry through with my ill-conceived threat to write to Santa and tell him ‘No Bionicles for Christmas’. This was Wednesday.
Monday, after spending the morning throwing up (no, I’m not pregnant) and the day at work feeling weak and dizzy, I arrive at After Care deep in brain fog. They look puzzled to see me. ‘F’s not here,’ they say. I panic. ‘Could someone else have picked him up?’ They couldn’t. His father and stepfather are both at work. Where could he be? What could have happened? Then I remember. On Mondays, he plays at a friend’s house after school. More than a little embarrassed, I reassure the worried-looking carer that I know where he is, I’d just forgotten, and head for the friend’s house.
‘You’re early,’ the Mother greets me at the door. ‘Are you okay? You look terrible.’ I feel terrible, and I’m about to feel worse. She pulls me into the ‘good’ sitting room, the one they don’t use, to tell me about her afternoon. Apparently, she’d overhead F saying something about sucking a woman’s breast on the way home and told him that if she ever heard anything like that again, he is no longer welcome at the house. ‘I like F,’ she said. ‘But A is innocent, and I’d like to keep him that way. I let him watch The Blues Brothers, but that’s about it. I don’t mean to judge, but I don’t know where F has picked that up from. Do you? He’s a very advanced reader, so maybe he read it somewhere?’ (Yeah, like all those Playboys I keep in my bottom drawer?!) I apologise, and assure her I will investigate and give F a thorough talking to. ‘I mean, it was one thing when he told A about how babies were made last week,’ she continues. ‘I didn’t really mind that, but … I didn’t really want him to know about it, but what can you do? I did have to put up with him saying penis and vagina all weekend, but … but that was okay, I guess.’ I still remember the look on her face last week when I told her that I’d overhead them having The Talk. I slink off to collect my wayward son.
‘What exactly did you say?’ I ask him as we walk home across the park.
‘I said that Supergirl was the stupidest movie I’d ever seen and A said Supergirl was beautiful. So I asked him if he wanted to suck Supergirl’s breast.’
‘Where did you get that from?’
‘From when you get born,’ he chirps. ‘You know, breastfeeding.’ His stepmother is breastfeeding. I breathe a huge sigh of relief and tell him to never say anything like that again.
Back to Wednesday. Wednesday is the day that A comes to play at our house. He’s a nice kid, and they play well together, but they also like to dob on each other. I have a rule: I don’t want to hear about it unless someone is hurt, someone is in danger or about to get hurt, or something is being wrecked. I find A before I find F.
‘My mum told me I have to tell you every time F says something rude,’ he tells me.
‘Great,’ I say, through clenched teeth.
I read F’s Communication Book outside his classroom. He has spent the afternoon in the office for pulling his pants down. I find his teacher. We talk. I find the vice principal. We talk, while F and A play in the corridor outside her office. I am almost in tears.
‘He keeps doing it because it makes the other children laugh,’ she says. ‘But they don’t laugh so much anymore. They think it’s weird.’ I nod and agree. I tell her what I’ve been doing, and ask her what she suggests. Then she says something that really brings me to the edge of tears.
‘F is a great kid,’ she says. ‘He’s come so far this year. We’ve told him we’re really proud of him. He’s incredibly smart, and sometimes that causes problems. But I love having him around.’
‘Really?’ I say. ‘You do?’
I’ve spent the year worrying that they don’t like him.
I feel slightly better as I walk the boys home. I tell F that if he does it again, I will give all his Bionicles to my mother-in-law’s foster child, J.
‘Who’s that?’ asks A.
‘His cousin,’ I say. It’s what F has taken to calling him, and it’s easier than explaining. I go to the newsagent on the way home and buy glitter glue, textas, paintbrushes. The boys play best when they are drawing together.
I push my bike, loaded with art supplies, through the hot, smoggy park. A lags behind.
F points to the wall along the power station.
‘That’s graffiti,’ he says. ‘S says when he grows up, he wants to write graffiti.’ The boys giggle naughtily. F whispers something.
‘Excuse me,’ says A. ‘F said when he grows up, he wants to sniff vaginas.’
‘WHAT?’ I am furious. I interrogate the boys. I turns out that F said he wanted to sniff bums. Okay, bad, but Andy Griffiths rather than Hugh Hefner territory. A just wanted to say vagina. I growl at them both. I am hot, my throat hurts, my eyes sting, and my arm is sore from pushing the bike for so long.
At the front gate, A taps my arm.
‘Excuse me,’ he says. ‘F said that daisy was stupid.’
I look at him.
‘And stupid is a bad word?’
He nods.
‘Okay,’ I say. I lock up my bike and entertain thoughts of killing the Mother, who has condemned me to what is already a long and painful afternoon.
I am cutting up honey toast and apples at the kitchen table. A comes to fetch his carton of Ribena, and stays to watch. He is thoughtful.
‘So, if F is rude again, his cousin gets all his Bionicles?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’ He pauses. ‘You know, you could give them to me.’
‘That’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think so,’ I say, envisaging even more dobbing in a plot to gain F’s Bionicles. I also envisage the end of the friendship.
‘Oh.’ He takes a slice of apple. ‘You could give half to me, half to his cousin?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe I could have just one?’
I snap. ‘A, if I was to give you F’s Bionicles if he was rude, you’d tell me was rude, wouldn’t you? So, I don’t think it’s a good idea. They’ll go to his cousin. And hopefully, F will be good.’
‘I won’t say he’s rude.’
‘No.’
The Mother is due between 5.30pm and 6pm. At 6.10pm, she hasn’t arrived. I want this to be over. I have a headache with trying to work out who is really being rude, who is making up stories, who actually deserves to be told off, and how to explain that I don’t really care if someone said ‘bloody’. There are just as many complaints about 'innocent' A as about F. Next week, I plan to revert to my rule.
The Mother arrives at 6.30pm, breezily. She has, as usual, brought A’s little brother. The three boys shoot out into the backyard for a light sabre duel. I want her to go. I am too angry and tired to deal with her. The Husband shoots her a look and disappears. He is furious, as is F’s father, about the fuss. They think she is a prude. F’s father actually came out with a killer of a line when I told him how upset she was about the sex ed, and penis and vagina. ‘What would she prefer?’ he said, icily. ‘That A goes around saying prick and cunt?’
The Mother deals with the frosty atmosphere by settling in for the long haul, to show that we are friends and everything is okay. She talks and talks. She follows the boys out the back and comments on the progress of the light sabre duels. She tells me about a meal she made recently, and gives me the recipe, step by step. She asks for lemons from the tree. She tells me that she wants to make lemon butter. She gives me a recipe for lemon butter. She tells me that the great thing to do with lemon butter is to make a pudding. She gives me the recipe. She tells me how nice the lemon tree is, and about her lemon tree, and about her friend’s lemon tree, and what her friend does with lemons, and how her mother propagates fruit trees, and how she herself does it. It is 7pm. She asks me, finally, about the sucking breasts thing. I tell her about the breastfeeding and she is surprised and relieved. She tells me, again, that she wishes A hadn’t been told the facts of life. She tells me, again, that he’s been saying vagina. That she was doing the ironing, and he said ‘Mum, you have a vagina, don’t you?’
At 7.30pm, she finally leaves. At the door, she grabs my arm and asks, ‘Are you doing anything right now?’ I need to cook dinner, serve dinner, bath F, get him into his PJs, put him to bed and read him a story. By 8.30pm. And then I need to write and research an article.
‘Why?’
‘A is missing his bike,’ she says. (He left it here last week.) ‘Can you walk him to the park so he can ride it home?’
‘Okay.’ I just want it to all be over. A asks if F can come. I say no, too sharply. I say that F will walk home too slowly and I need to start dinner soon, an edge of resentment in my voice. As we trudge to the end of the driveway, the Mother grabs my arm again.
‘Hey!’ she says. ‘Come here!’ And she gives me a hug. I smile weakly and wave goodbye.
‘Why does F like Bionicles so much?’ asks A.
‘I don’t know.’ I try to be upbeat and friendly, overcompensating. ‘I guess he just does.’
‘I don’t,’ says A. ‘I like superheroes.’ And with that, he climbs onto his bike and pedals off down the hill, me jogging behind.
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