I'm a little scared about what I'll find at 3.30pm.
The Husband - who was responsible for the morning school run - rang from work this morning to tell me he'd given F some money for today's Munchie Stall.
'I thought it was for lunch,' he told me. 'So I gave him $7.'
Cue speechless laughter.
'Then he said, don't worry about packing lunch, then. And that's when I realised my mistake. It was too late to take it back.'
Luckily, I was too tired and relieved that he'd remembered the money I'd forgotten about when I got up at 5.30am to say anything much.
'But it's okay,' said The Husband. 'It's a healthy Munchie Stall.'
I glanced at the honey-streaked notice wedged under a half-eaten crumpet on the dining room table. I read the words 'Healthy Muchie Stall'.
'Ah,' I sighed. 'You see, what they MEAN by healthy is no lollies. There WILL, however, be cakes and cookies.'
'Oh.'
There is momentary silence while we both picture F gorging on a small mountain of $1 cakes and 50 cent cookies.
'It doesn't matter,' I laughed. 'He'll live.'
And that's the kind of parent I am this week.
* And yes, I have been an amazingly slack blogger and this is a woeful return to blogging. All I can say is that life is very busy indeed lately and that I am reading the blogs on my blogroll(though not generally having the leftover mental energy to comment). Back soon. Sooner or later, anyway.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, September 08, 2008
Neighbours
Our neighbour has been loping up and down Anderson Street all morning, mostly empty-handed, though once he was purposefully clutching a carton of milk. He’s a retired accountant – and with his solemn moustache, square wire-framed glasses and a revolving wardrobe of collared shirts and slacks, he looks like one. Only his impossibly wide eyes and alarmingly arched eyebrows signal his impassioned second career, as a dogged community activist. He goes to council meetings and makes speeches; sets private appointments with our local MP and other politicians; has the local paper on speed dial. He regularly crosses the city to Camberwell, where a lady types up his petitions and letters of protest for $30 each. (“She’s very good,” he tells me. “If you ever need some typing done ...”) It’s not unusual that I’ll be walking past and he’ll shout “I spoke to Wade Noonan today!” or “they’re starting to listen!” from behind his roses and geraniums.
**
Two weeks ago, I was walking to the train station when I noticed Keith (not his real name) striding towards me from the railway lines ahead. His face was set, sharply focused in my direction. He crossed the road and opened his mouth, raising an arm to flag me down. Or so I thought. The power walker at my side, in his lycra shorts and gleaming white sneakers, iPod at his waist, audibly sighed as Keith blocked his path.
“We’ve got em now! I’ve ...”
“Not now, Keith.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I have to tell you ...”
“Keith, no. I’ve got my pulse up. Got to keep going.”
“That’s fine. I’ll walk with you.”
“NO, Keith.”
With the beatific inner smile of the newly reprieved, I watched them round the corner just ahead of me, Keith just centimetres from the power walker’s side, his moustachioed face leaning into the man’s grimace as he waved him off angrily. Their disjointed symphony of furious monologue and equally emphatic dismissal faded to a hum as I passed the hairdresser’s.
**
Keith spends much of his time these days crusading on two causes: reinstating the underpass at Yarraville train station and cutting back the buses that cruise up and down Anderson Street. He’s not the only one campaigning for an underpass – there’s a community group headed up by a local trader, too. There have been two accidents at the level crossing on Anderson Street in the past year: a cyclist and a council worker driving a truck have both been hit by trains. (Admittedly, both times the security barriers have been firmly up, and the unfortunate victims have dodged or broken through them.) During peak hour, it’s not uncommon for crowds of commuters and locals to be stranded at the railway crossing for a solid five minutes or more. An underpass would be handy. I’m all for it. I’ve even signed Keith’s petition, which is sticky-taped to the counter at the local fish and chip shop.
I’m very much not on his side when it comes to the bus issue. Yes, many of those buses are empty. But it takes time to attract users to a new service, and until recently, the buses were scheduled so haphazardly (not linking with trains, no buses for two hours at lunch time, no buses after 6pm-ish, barely running on weekends) that they were only useful to pensioners with time on their hands and shopping to do. Or, occasionally, before I moved from the far side of Yarraville: me. I have no car and a lazy streak which sometimes compelled me to skip the 20-minute walk from the shopping strip, in favour of a bus ride that took exactly the same length of time.
I was always amazed at the fortitude of my elderly fellow passengers, as the bus lurched along the back streets and over speed humps, jolting me from my seat as I clung to the steel poles and braced my jarred back. Tree branches were often clipped as the bus spun around corners. There were so few passengers that, instead of abiding by the scheduled stops, you were encouraged to call out when the bus passed nearest your house. At your shout, it would crunch to a sudden halt, sending shopping bags and any standing passengers skidding along the aisle.
Two years ago, when I was working full-time, I got sick. The kind of sick where you don’t really get better after a week at home, and you force yourself to return to work because it’s obvious that this is going to last a while, and you can’t very well not work for weeks. I couldn’t walk very far without pain – and certainly not the distance to the train station – so I was forced to rely on the bus to get to work. I would cross Cruikshank Park in the morning dark, my breath melting into the surrounding mist as I powered through the gloom towards the lights of Somerville Road. There, I would huddle outside the Hungry Jacks and make small talk with the teenage boy who caught my bus every day at the same stop. (“Don’t walk through the park,” he warned me. “Girls have been raped in there after dark. And my sister has friends who’ve been followed by guys who’ve exposed themselves.”) The bus was inconvenient and irregular, and the drivers were mostly terrible, but it meant that I got to work each day, through the six weeks that I was ill. And every time Keith starts growling about the buses, I wonder how I would have continued to work without them.
I don’t have the courage to tell Keith what I think about the buses, though I do politely decline to sign the petitions he brings to our door. I nod and I listen and I purse my lips, but he knows I’m not with the program. I think that’s why he brings up the waste of fuel caused by the empty buses, fixing me with an challenging stare. How can I argue with that? Not long ago, he handed me a photocopied printout with the names, addresses and email contacts for our local member, council members and the transport minister. There was also an example letter that I could write, calling for the bus times to be limited. When I shut the front door and returned to serving up spaghetti bolognaise, F was watching me closely. “Did you tell him he’s wrong?” I don’t think I did, not really. I think I chose good neighbourly relations over my ideals. Who knows when we’ll next need to fetch a football, or when the dog will burrow under the fence into his backyard? And even though I disagree with him, I do like him.
**
This morning, at 7am, there were footsteps at our window, the dull thud of something hitting the verandah, the metal creak of the front gate being latched, then a slow fade of steps, now on the footpath.
Some hours later, at 9.30am, The Husband slapped the Sunday Herald Sun on the kitchen table, on top of yesterday’s Age.
“What is THAT?”
“I’ve got you the Herald Sun.”
“WHY?”
He dropped the charade.
“It was on the doormat when I opened the front door.”
“WHY?”
“I don’t know.”
**
Rewind to January this year: F’s first day back at school. One of his friends was over. The friend’s mother, M, and I sat companionably on my front porch, sipping gin and tonics and ignoring the squeals and shouts from the backyard. My bare legs rested on the wooden railing, the dark green paint peeling beneath my toes.
“I was on The Price is Right today.”
We looked up, startled, towards the open front gate. Keith was halfway up the front path, wearing a navy suit and striped tie – looking unusually formal.
“He-llo,” sang my companion. I heard the alcohol in her voice before I felt it tilting inside my head.
“Hi. I was on The Price is Right today, that’s where I’ve been this afternoon and it’ll be on TV this Wednesday. You should watch.”
“Wow, that’s great. I’ll ... I’ll certainly try.”
He said something about picking suitcases and that he picked one that won him $500.
“I can’t complain about that,” he grinned. “$500, hey? Well, make sure you watch.”
“Okay. Thanks for telling us. That’s great.” We both waved at him as he fastened the gate behind him and moved on, briefcase in hand, to the next house. We heard the gate open, footsteps, and a surprised voice at the front door.
My friend and I looked at each other.
“Is he a sandwich short of a picnic?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I giggled, pouring a trickle of gin into each of our glasses as two small boys crashed through the screen door and spilled at our feet. “I think he is.”
**
At our dining room table this morning, as The Husband spooned rice porridge into his mouth and I chewed a muesli bar, I spotted Keith lingering outside on the footpath. He put a hand on the front gate, stepped towards the house, then changed his mind and moved away.
“Maybe it was Keith,” I suggested. “Maybe he’s in the Herald Sun today and that’s why he put it there.”
“Could be.”
“Should we check?”
“If you want to.”
We couldn’t find him. But it’s still the best explanation I’ve got for why someone went to the trouble of carefully delivering us a Sunday Herald Sun.
**
Two weeks ago, I was walking to the train station when I noticed Keith (not his real name) striding towards me from the railway lines ahead. His face was set, sharply focused in my direction. He crossed the road and opened his mouth, raising an arm to flag me down. Or so I thought. The power walker at my side, in his lycra shorts and gleaming white sneakers, iPod at his waist, audibly sighed as Keith blocked his path.
“We’ve got em now! I’ve ...”
“Not now, Keith.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I have to tell you ...”
“Keith, no. I’ve got my pulse up. Got to keep going.”
“That’s fine. I’ll walk with you.”
“NO, Keith.”
With the beatific inner smile of the newly reprieved, I watched them round the corner just ahead of me, Keith just centimetres from the power walker’s side, his moustachioed face leaning into the man’s grimace as he waved him off angrily. Their disjointed symphony of furious monologue and equally emphatic dismissal faded to a hum as I passed the hairdresser’s.
**
Keith spends much of his time these days crusading on two causes: reinstating the underpass at Yarraville train station and cutting back the buses that cruise up and down Anderson Street. He’s not the only one campaigning for an underpass – there’s a community group headed up by a local trader, too. There have been two accidents at the level crossing on Anderson Street in the past year: a cyclist and a council worker driving a truck have both been hit by trains. (Admittedly, both times the security barriers have been firmly up, and the unfortunate victims have dodged or broken through them.) During peak hour, it’s not uncommon for crowds of commuters and locals to be stranded at the railway crossing for a solid five minutes or more. An underpass would be handy. I’m all for it. I’ve even signed Keith’s petition, which is sticky-taped to the counter at the local fish and chip shop.
I’m very much not on his side when it comes to the bus issue. Yes, many of those buses are empty. But it takes time to attract users to a new service, and until recently, the buses were scheduled so haphazardly (not linking with trains, no buses for two hours at lunch time, no buses after 6pm-ish, barely running on weekends) that they were only useful to pensioners with time on their hands and shopping to do. Or, occasionally, before I moved from the far side of Yarraville: me. I have no car and a lazy streak which sometimes compelled me to skip the 20-minute walk from the shopping strip, in favour of a bus ride that took exactly the same length of time.
I was always amazed at the fortitude of my elderly fellow passengers, as the bus lurched along the back streets and over speed humps, jolting me from my seat as I clung to the steel poles and braced my jarred back. Tree branches were often clipped as the bus spun around corners. There were so few passengers that, instead of abiding by the scheduled stops, you were encouraged to call out when the bus passed nearest your house. At your shout, it would crunch to a sudden halt, sending shopping bags and any standing passengers skidding along the aisle.
Two years ago, when I was working full-time, I got sick. The kind of sick where you don’t really get better after a week at home, and you force yourself to return to work because it’s obvious that this is going to last a while, and you can’t very well not work for weeks. I couldn’t walk very far without pain – and certainly not the distance to the train station – so I was forced to rely on the bus to get to work. I would cross Cruikshank Park in the morning dark, my breath melting into the surrounding mist as I powered through the gloom towards the lights of Somerville Road. There, I would huddle outside the Hungry Jacks and make small talk with the teenage boy who caught my bus every day at the same stop. (“Don’t walk through the park,” he warned me. “Girls have been raped in there after dark. And my sister has friends who’ve been followed by guys who’ve exposed themselves.”) The bus was inconvenient and irregular, and the drivers were mostly terrible, but it meant that I got to work each day, through the six weeks that I was ill. And every time Keith starts growling about the buses, I wonder how I would have continued to work without them.
I don’t have the courage to tell Keith what I think about the buses, though I do politely decline to sign the petitions he brings to our door. I nod and I listen and I purse my lips, but he knows I’m not with the program. I think that’s why he brings up the waste of fuel caused by the empty buses, fixing me with an challenging stare. How can I argue with that? Not long ago, he handed me a photocopied printout with the names, addresses and email contacts for our local member, council members and the transport minister. There was also an example letter that I could write, calling for the bus times to be limited. When I shut the front door and returned to serving up spaghetti bolognaise, F was watching me closely. “Did you tell him he’s wrong?” I don’t think I did, not really. I think I chose good neighbourly relations over my ideals. Who knows when we’ll next need to fetch a football, or when the dog will burrow under the fence into his backyard? And even though I disagree with him, I do like him.
**
This morning, at 7am, there were footsteps at our window, the dull thud of something hitting the verandah, the metal creak of the front gate being latched, then a slow fade of steps, now on the footpath.
Some hours later, at 9.30am, The Husband slapped the Sunday Herald Sun on the kitchen table, on top of yesterday’s Age.
“What is THAT?”
“I’ve got you the Herald Sun.”
“WHY?”
He dropped the charade.
“It was on the doormat when I opened the front door.”
“WHY?”
“I don’t know.”
**
Rewind to January this year: F’s first day back at school. One of his friends was over. The friend’s mother, M, and I sat companionably on my front porch, sipping gin and tonics and ignoring the squeals and shouts from the backyard. My bare legs rested on the wooden railing, the dark green paint peeling beneath my toes.
“I was on The Price is Right today.”
We looked up, startled, towards the open front gate. Keith was halfway up the front path, wearing a navy suit and striped tie – looking unusually formal.
“He-llo,” sang my companion. I heard the alcohol in her voice before I felt it tilting inside my head.
“Hi. I was on The Price is Right today, that’s where I’ve been this afternoon and it’ll be on TV this Wednesday. You should watch.”
“Wow, that’s great. I’ll ... I’ll certainly try.”
He said something about picking suitcases and that he picked one that won him $500.
“I can’t complain about that,” he grinned. “$500, hey? Well, make sure you watch.”
“Okay. Thanks for telling us. That’s great.” We both waved at him as he fastened the gate behind him and moved on, briefcase in hand, to the next house. We heard the gate open, footsteps, and a surprised voice at the front door.
My friend and I looked at each other.
“Is he a sandwich short of a picnic?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I giggled, pouring a trickle of gin into each of our glasses as two small boys crashed through the screen door and spilled at our feet. “I think he is.”
**
At our dining room table this morning, as The Husband spooned rice porridge into his mouth and I chewed a muesli bar, I spotted Keith lingering outside on the footpath. He put a hand on the front gate, stepped towards the house, then changed his mind and moved away.
“Maybe it was Keith,” I suggested. “Maybe he’s in the Herald Sun today and that’s why he put it there.”
“Could be.”
“Should we check?”
“If you want to.”
We couldn’t find him. But it’s still the best explanation I’ve got for why someone went to the trouble of carefully delivering us a Sunday Herald Sun.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Birthday (1)
The birthday begins on Thursday afternoon at 4pm, when The Ex informs me that F wants cupcakes to bring into class the next day, and can I bake some that evening?
“No,” I say. “I can’t.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I can make them, then, and bring them to you when I drop him off.”
“Sure, fine.”
“Oh. Okay. I thought I’d give you the chance to do it, you know, because you do it every year.”
“He’s in Year Three now. They don’t do that anymore. I’m not baking him cakes to take to school on every birthday for his whole life.”
“Okay. It’s just ... he wants them. He’s asked about it.”
“Well, he should have asked earlier. He can’t just ask for things the night before. I have work to do tonight. I can’t do it.”
“It’s fine. I’ll bring them in.”
“Okay.”
F is dropped off on Swanston Street, below the blue fairy lights of the Arts Centre, at 7.30pm. He slithers out of the car, feet first, as his father passes two bulging supermarket bags through the open door; each tied in a filmy white bow.
“Here are the cakes and the icing. It’s all there. All you have to do is ice them!”
“But I don’t have time! I told you that.”
“The icing is made! It’ll take you no time at all.”
“Well, I can’t. I have work to do.”
We glare at each other as I close the door and back onto the footpath, pulling F with me. He chases the car along Swanston Street at a leisurely jog, easily keeping pace with the sluggish traffic. He skips off the kerb and onto the road to tap at the window of the crawling car. I scold him and pull him back again. (“You could get yourself run over!”)
“Bye Dad! Bye Dad!” he sings, dancing along the footpath now, against the tide of slickly suited office workers and carefully groomed theatregoers.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do it,” I tell him, throwing out my words in cross little bites. I explain that I have to prepare and practice for a big talk I have to give tomorrow, that he can’t ask things at the last moment, that I told Dad I couldn’t do it. My thoughts whirl furiously as I talk, an undertow of resentment: I’m already here picking F up from the city so that The Ex, whose car is at the mechanic’s, won’t have to catch public transport from the inner south to Yarraville tomorrow morning. This is one favour too many. As F accepts his fate, that he will bring naked cakes to school tomorrow, I realise with a twist of the stomach that I will, of course, ice the bloody things.
**
“You are a good mother,” hums The Husband, watching from the couch as I untie the bags and wrestle with the plastic containers of icing. One is gluey-white; the other iridescent blue. I dip a tentative finger into the blue and lick it, recoiling at the chemical assault on my tongue. It must have been just as vile when I made blue-and-yellow cupcakes last year, when he barracked for the West Coast Eagles. Maybe it tastes worse when someone else makes it. I cross the room and extend a blue-tipped finger to The Husband. He squints at it.
“What?”
“Taste it.”
“No.”
“Just a little bit?”
“No.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, I know it will be. It’s bloody bright blue, for god’s sake.”
I scrape the knife across each cake as quickly as I can, working my way through the bag and arranging them on a plastic tray. Do I have to do all of them? There’s not going to be enough icing anyway. There are 30 cakes.
“F?” I’m at the doorway of his darkened bedroom.
“Yes?”
“How many kids in your class?”
“30.”
I’m pretty sure he is making it up, to make sure I ice all the cakes. I’m pretty sure there are 24 kids in his class. Or is that 26? The icing runs out at 26.
It’s 9pm when the plastic-wrapped tray of blue and white circles is finished, and I can start work.
**
It’s Crazy Hair Day today. The pharmacy at Flinders Street station was closed last night, and by the time I finished the cakes, the last local one was, too. It’s an early start, so we can take a slightly different route to school and buy the obligatory coloured hairspray on the way. First, I smother F’s hair in surf wax and tease his hair upright. He looks like a sandy-haired Robert Smith from The Cure, in school uniform.
“I look SO crazy!” he shouts at his reflection. “I will DEFINITELY win the prize for craziest hair! Yeah!”
He poses, perched on the rim of the bath, plucking at the strings of his imaginary air guitar.
On the footpath outside our house, he bends to waggle his head at his shadow, a miniature Narcissus at his bitumen looking-glass.
“I’m a PUNK, Mum!”
“You certainly are.”
At the pharmacy, we tie Snuffy to a yellow pole in the carpark, away from the glass shards that stud the gravel. There is only one can of coloured hairspray left: orange.
“There must be a school sports day or something,” apologises the bemused sales assistant.
“It’s Crazy Hair Day!” beams F.
“Ahhh,” she smiles. “Well, your hair certainly is crazy.”
“I know! It’s my birthday, too.”
She nods at the tray of cakes as she hands me my change and says something complimentary about them.
“Yes! All the kids always LOVE my Mum’s cakes. She makes the BEST cakes!”
Weirdly, I am touched even as I remind him that his dad actually made them. Snuffy watches, wide-eyed, as F dips and twists his head and I attack it with a sticky, hissing mist of fluorescent orange. His ear is streaked orange, as are my hands. I spit into a crumbling tissue from my jeans pocket and clean his ear. My hands remain stubbornly bright.
F bounds alongside Somerville Road and its growling chorus of trucks and cars. He practices leaping, in a kind of flying crouch, landing with his feet wide apart, his tongue firmly protruding in a defiant pink arrow. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!” It’s a sort of unconscious perversion of the Maori haka. He is especially delighted when the first uniformed kids emerge from a cross-street, their longish hair defying gravity with the help of tightly woven pipe cleaners. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”
“Oh, hello F!” laughs their Dad. He looks at the cakes. “Is it your birthday?”
“Yes! It is!” He turns to me, suddenly serious. “Can you come to assembly today?”
“Sorry darling, I can’t. I have work to do. My talk today.”
“Please? They’ll give me my birthday card. I’m going to achieve my dream today – to get up on a stage in front of people looking like this.”
“It might not be until next week.”
“No. My name was in the newsletter this week.”
“I’m so sorry, darling, but I just can’t. I have to be in the city to give this talk at 12.30pm and before that I have to have a shower and wash my hair and get dressed and practice again.” I appeal to his finely developed sense of logic and justice. Then I appeal to his sense of humour, for good measure. “I can’t get up in front of people like this, can I?” I am wearing jeans and sneakers, with a hooded tracksuit top. My hair is scraped back in a greasy ponytail.
“Sure you could.”
We’re at the school gate now. I hug him tight and wave him off as he leaps into the schoolyard, tongue flickering, tray of cakes held before him. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”
“No,” I say. “I can’t.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I can make them, then, and bring them to you when I drop him off.”
“Sure, fine.”
“Oh. Okay. I thought I’d give you the chance to do it, you know, because you do it every year.”
“He’s in Year Three now. They don’t do that anymore. I’m not baking him cakes to take to school on every birthday for his whole life.”
“Okay. It’s just ... he wants them. He’s asked about it.”
“Well, he should have asked earlier. He can’t just ask for things the night before. I have work to do tonight. I can’t do it.”
“It’s fine. I’ll bring them in.”
“Okay.”
F is dropped off on Swanston Street, below the blue fairy lights of the Arts Centre, at 7.30pm. He slithers out of the car, feet first, as his father passes two bulging supermarket bags through the open door; each tied in a filmy white bow.
“Here are the cakes and the icing. It’s all there. All you have to do is ice them!”
“But I don’t have time! I told you that.”
“The icing is made! It’ll take you no time at all.”
“Well, I can’t. I have work to do.”
We glare at each other as I close the door and back onto the footpath, pulling F with me. He chases the car along Swanston Street at a leisurely jog, easily keeping pace with the sluggish traffic. He skips off the kerb and onto the road to tap at the window of the crawling car. I scold him and pull him back again. (“You could get yourself run over!”)
“Bye Dad! Bye Dad!” he sings, dancing along the footpath now, against the tide of slickly suited office workers and carefully groomed theatregoers.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do it,” I tell him, throwing out my words in cross little bites. I explain that I have to prepare and practice for a big talk I have to give tomorrow, that he can’t ask things at the last moment, that I told Dad I couldn’t do it. My thoughts whirl furiously as I talk, an undertow of resentment: I’m already here picking F up from the city so that The Ex, whose car is at the mechanic’s, won’t have to catch public transport from the inner south to Yarraville tomorrow morning. This is one favour too many. As F accepts his fate, that he will bring naked cakes to school tomorrow, I realise with a twist of the stomach that I will, of course, ice the bloody things.
**
“You are a good mother,” hums The Husband, watching from the couch as I untie the bags and wrestle with the plastic containers of icing. One is gluey-white; the other iridescent blue. I dip a tentative finger into the blue and lick it, recoiling at the chemical assault on my tongue. It must have been just as vile when I made blue-and-yellow cupcakes last year, when he barracked for the West Coast Eagles. Maybe it tastes worse when someone else makes it. I cross the room and extend a blue-tipped finger to The Husband. He squints at it.
“What?”
“Taste it.”
“No.”
“Just a little bit?”
“No.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, I know it will be. It’s bloody bright blue, for god’s sake.”
I scrape the knife across each cake as quickly as I can, working my way through the bag and arranging them on a plastic tray. Do I have to do all of them? There’s not going to be enough icing anyway. There are 30 cakes.
“F?” I’m at the doorway of his darkened bedroom.
“Yes?”
“How many kids in your class?”
“30.”
I’m pretty sure he is making it up, to make sure I ice all the cakes. I’m pretty sure there are 24 kids in his class. Or is that 26? The icing runs out at 26.
It’s 9pm when the plastic-wrapped tray of blue and white circles is finished, and I can start work.
**
It’s Crazy Hair Day today. The pharmacy at Flinders Street station was closed last night, and by the time I finished the cakes, the last local one was, too. It’s an early start, so we can take a slightly different route to school and buy the obligatory coloured hairspray on the way. First, I smother F’s hair in surf wax and tease his hair upright. He looks like a sandy-haired Robert Smith from The Cure, in school uniform.
“I look SO crazy!” he shouts at his reflection. “I will DEFINITELY win the prize for craziest hair! Yeah!”
He poses, perched on the rim of the bath, plucking at the strings of his imaginary air guitar.
On the footpath outside our house, he bends to waggle his head at his shadow, a miniature Narcissus at his bitumen looking-glass.
“I’m a PUNK, Mum!”
“You certainly are.”
At the pharmacy, we tie Snuffy to a yellow pole in the carpark, away from the glass shards that stud the gravel. There is only one can of coloured hairspray left: orange.
“There must be a school sports day or something,” apologises the bemused sales assistant.
“It’s Crazy Hair Day!” beams F.
“Ahhh,” she smiles. “Well, your hair certainly is crazy.”
“I know! It’s my birthday, too.”
She nods at the tray of cakes as she hands me my change and says something complimentary about them.
“Yes! All the kids always LOVE my Mum’s cakes. She makes the BEST cakes!”
Weirdly, I am touched even as I remind him that his dad actually made them. Snuffy watches, wide-eyed, as F dips and twists his head and I attack it with a sticky, hissing mist of fluorescent orange. His ear is streaked orange, as are my hands. I spit into a crumbling tissue from my jeans pocket and clean his ear. My hands remain stubbornly bright.
F bounds alongside Somerville Road and its growling chorus of trucks and cars. He practices leaping, in a kind of flying crouch, landing with his feet wide apart, his tongue firmly protruding in a defiant pink arrow. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!” It’s a sort of unconscious perversion of the Maori haka. He is especially delighted when the first uniformed kids emerge from a cross-street, their longish hair defying gravity with the help of tightly woven pipe cleaners. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”
“Oh, hello F!” laughs their Dad. He looks at the cakes. “Is it your birthday?”
“Yes! It is!” He turns to me, suddenly serious. “Can you come to assembly today?”
“Sorry darling, I can’t. I have work to do. My talk today.”
“Please? They’ll give me my birthday card. I’m going to achieve my dream today – to get up on a stage in front of people looking like this.”
“It might not be until next week.”
“No. My name was in the newsletter this week.”
“I’m so sorry, darling, but I just can’t. I have to be in the city to give this talk at 12.30pm and before that I have to have a shower and wash my hair and get dressed and practice again.” I appeal to his finely developed sense of logic and justice. Then I appeal to his sense of humour, for good measure. “I can’t get up in front of people like this, can I?” I am wearing jeans and sneakers, with a hooded tracksuit top. My hair is scraped back in a greasy ponytail.
“Sure you could.”
We’re at the school gate now. I hug him tight and wave him off as he leaps into the schoolyard, tongue flickering, tray of cakes held before him. “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”
Monday, July 28, 2008
At least it's a bit different
I wonder how many mothers spent about ten minutes positioned awkwardly up a tree this afternoon, as if playing Twister, shouting mournfully, at intervals, for their son to hurry up and emerge from the toilet to help them. At which point, having been handed the garden rake from below, they managed, after much manoevuring, to snooker the football from its perch in the uppermost branches and jump back down onto the muddy lawn.
And if they did, I wonder if that was after meticulously delousing their child (and themselves), explaining as they combed still-squirming giant bugs from fine boyish hair how The Simpsons reinvented a movie called Pulp Fiction in a recent episdoe they watched: leaving out The Gimp, of course.
And if they then decided, at midday, to keep their son home from school for the whole day, as so much time had passed in the process of delousing.
If the morning had stretched out partly due to one of their dogs digging under next-door's fence and having to be fetched home. If they had to finish serving up cheesy scrambled eggs for their son's breakfast VERY carefully, their fingernails embedded with damp black mud from having to fill in the hole their dog had dug, before returning to the kitchen to warm up the eggs and serve them.
I wonder.
And if they did, I wonder if that was after meticulously delousing their child (and themselves), explaining as they combed still-squirming giant bugs from fine boyish hair how The Simpsons reinvented a movie called Pulp Fiction in a recent episdoe they watched: leaving out The Gimp, of course.
And if they then decided, at midday, to keep their son home from school for the whole day, as so much time had passed in the process of delousing.
If the morning had stretched out partly due to one of their dogs digging under next-door's fence and having to be fetched home. If they had to finish serving up cheesy scrambled eggs for their son's breakfast VERY carefully, their fingernails embedded with damp black mud from having to fill in the hole their dog had dug, before returning to the kitchen to warm up the eggs and serve them.
I wonder.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Not so bad after all
I wouldn't say I'm a football convert, but I did have a great time at the MCG this afternoon, I did cheer and shout for F's team, and I have agreed to do it again some time.
It wasn't, of course, about the game. It was about the delightful company of F and Boy Next Door and the fact that, once we sat down on our raindrop-streaked plastic seats behind the goal posts, F caught me in a surprise hug and said 'I really do appreciate you taking us, Mum', in a voice that really meant it. And that BND leaned across and echoed his sentiments. I am so lucky to have such a lovely boy, with such a lovely friend.
And the book I'd brought along stayed firmly in my bag all day long ... though I did read the Sunday Age at half time.
It wasn't, of course, about the game. It was about the delightful company of F and Boy Next Door and the fact that, once we sat down on our raindrop-streaked plastic seats behind the goal posts, F caught me in a surprise hug and said 'I really do appreciate you taking us, Mum', in a voice that really meant it. And that BND leaned across and echoed his sentiments. I am so lucky to have such a lovely boy, with such a lovely friend.
And the book I'd brought along stayed firmly in my bag all day long ... though I did read the Sunday Age at half time.
My worst nightmare
I have been coerced into taking F to the football today. I can't think of anything I'd like to do LESS on a rainy Sunday afternoon (or any afternoon, really), but if I don't do it, I'm a Slack Mum. So, off I go. Feeling very sorry for myself indeed.
The only other time I have ever been to a professional football match is when my brother was about F's age and I took him to see Port Adelaide play a game for his birthday. I remember being grossed out by the bogan girls offering to eat one player's shorts, and not in a Bart Simpson kind of way. There were shouts of 'show us your DICK, Scotty!' and much stamping of ugh boots and clicking of synthetic nails. Of course, these days it's not just bogan girls who wear ugh boots and horrible plastic nails. And it's postively un-Australian not to like football (or un-Victorian, anyway).
When I was a starting drinker, aged 17 (of course), I remember being told by a horrified male friend, an afficionado of footy and Nintendo and dope and the arcade machine at the local milk bar, that I was 'un-Australian' because I don't drink beer.
Still don't.
I'm very, very un-Australian.
And I really, really hate football.
Maybe there will be some kind of natural disaster on our way to the MCG and I will get out of it.
The only other time I have ever been to a professional football match is when my brother was about F's age and I took him to see Port Adelaide play a game for his birthday. I remember being grossed out by the bogan girls offering to eat one player's shorts, and not in a Bart Simpson kind of way. There were shouts of 'show us your DICK, Scotty!' and much stamping of ugh boots and clicking of synthetic nails. Of course, these days it's not just bogan girls who wear ugh boots and horrible plastic nails. And it's postively un-Australian not to like football (or un-Victorian, anyway).
When I was a starting drinker, aged 17 (of course), I remember being told by a horrified male friend, an afficionado of footy and Nintendo and dope and the arcade machine at the local milk bar, that I was 'un-Australian' because I don't drink beer.
Still don't.
I'm very, very un-Australian.
And I really, really hate football.
Maybe there will be some kind of natural disaster on our way to the MCG and I will get out of it.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The morning after
It’s the kind of awakening that makes you realise you did get to sleep after all. You gradually realise that you’re conscious, which in turn makes you realise you must have been unconscious at some point, even though your memories of the previous night are full of staring at the red eye of the digital clock: 1am (you’re wide awake, might as well get up), 3am (back in bed, surely you can fall asleep now), 5am (please, please let me get to sleep).
It’s 7.10am, so you – I – close my eyes again, squeeze them shut, and try to eke out another half hour of sleep before I get up for Auskick.
My thoughts are full of work undone, deadlines looming, interview subjects not returning calls, work submitted ... and a dog biting a child on the face. A child who is coming over soon, to go to Auskick.
Once again, those thoughts stubbornly push aside the fog of sleep that hovers tantalisingly close. This means that I when I get up at last, at 8am on the clock (which means 7.45am), I am awake.
Mum is buried under a quilt on the couch, only her hair visible: light golden brown with a bolt of silver at her hairline. The Husband and F are at the breakfast table, eating rice porridge and crumpets respectively. The dogs are pattering around the room, their toenails clicking on the wooden boards.
I am in the hallway when the doorbell rings, and duck into the bathroom, pulling the sliding door behind me. The Husband is in there too, peering into the mirror. He looks at me for a moment before leaving to answer the door. I hear murmured conversation, lowered voices, excited small boy yelps.
How was he? I whisper, as The Husband rejoins me in the bathroom. BND’s father is still quietly angry, but affable enough, he reports.
“He’s here,” he calls over his shoulder, as he moves into the hallway. “That’s a good start.”
“Who’s here?” asks F, bouncing on the carpet outside the closed door.
**
The wind grows colder as we walk down the road towards the oval, climbing the path past the skate ramp and towards the hole in the wire fence. I duck and stand, holding up the wire that runs horizontally across the hole to make more room for Mum.
“I hope you remember soon that I am getting older,” she says, as she straightens her back.
“Nah, you’ve got at least another ten years. Or more. Look at your mother!” Her mother was still tap dancing, performing in travelling revues at nursing homes in fishnet tights, when she was sixtysomething. HER mother, when the show stopped at her own nursing home, would stand in the aisle, holding tight to her walking frame, to shout and wolf whistle.
“Hmmph,” says Mum.
We queue for coffee and carry our stryofoam cups to the edge of the oval, where we sit on a bench side by side and squint across the grey expanse of sky to where the boys – The Husband, F and BND – are forming lines and starting their drills. The wind assails us, sending a spreading chill through my body that settles in my toes and marbles my hands, even as the coffee warms my palms through the Styrofoam.
We move onto the grass, where it is even colder, and I shrug into my (fake) fur-lined gloves and hunch into my scarf. BND’s father appears behind the goal-posts, drinking from a silver column and sucking on a cigarette. I try to catch his eye, then try not to. Mum demonstrates how penguins take turns shielding each other from the wind as I think about the mark on BND’s cheek and watch warily, intently, as F frowns and pushes his shoulders out in the first sulk of the match: disturbingly early.
Needless to say, my early, unwanted hunch is correct. Mum tries to distract me with stories about football matches on the oval at the high school where she teaches as F’s behaviour descends from bad to worse. I watch him throw himself onto his stomach on the grass; wander the oval crying; limp behind the ball, crippled by tears; punch an opposing team-mate in the arm; wave his arms in the air, giving himself up to the rhythm of his wailing. Finally, he drags himself towards us, his face red and eyes swimming, shouting that he doesn’t want to do Auskick anymore, not ever again, that he wants to go home.
I am glaring into the wind and the grey day that I have unwillingly emerged into after a sleep I don’t remember having. I am thinking that I have a dog who bites children in the face and a child who has tantrums on the football field and punches people and that this is the first day of Auskick for Boy Next Door and that his father is there watching, watching our family’s atrocious, antisocial behaviour once again.
“I don’t want to EXIST,’ wails F and I snap back at him, like a rubber band suddenly let go:
“Neither do I.”
Mum, on holiday from Adelaide, on the second real day of her long service leave, looks at us both as I grab him by the arm and pull him after me under the rails surrounding the oval, hissing at him that I am ashamed of his behaviour and that he is a bad sport and that I will be very happy to take him home.
Tears and snot run into his mouth.
The Husband calls from the oval as we stand by the hole in the fence: me on the street side, F on the football ground: just. He beckons F back, and I let him go, on the provision that he doesn’t let him back into the game. As The Husband holds him by the shoulders and talks him out of his hysteria, the team begin shedding their red and black bibs, dispersing to kick a shower of footballs towards the goals in a celebratory frenzy.
The Father who has told his children not to play with F because he has a bad attitude climbs through the hole, his two sons behind him. He smiles at me, too brightly, as he passes.
“Terrible weather we’re having.”
“Yes,” I say, as his sons look at me with interest. “Yes, it is.”
I wave at the mother whose son plays at my house every Monday, standing by the canteen at the bottom of the hill, but she doesn’t see, or pretends not to. When I climb down to join my boys – and the next door boys – she is gone. Through the grey haze in my head, I impute dark motives to her disappearance.
Our next door neighbour chats about the football game and his son’s enjoyment of it before his tone drops an octave, and he addresses the elephant (or dog) in the room.
“I was angry as all hell yesterday,” he says. “When I saw how close it got to his eye. But, as I was saying to The Husband, we don’t want to make you get rid of your dog. Maybe you should get him a muzzle?”
“Oh no! We want to get rid of him. I can’t have the risk of ... I feel sick about what happened ...” Tears enter my voice. “I’m so sorry.”
We change the subject quickly, as he gives his son money for a second hotdog.
The coach pulls me aside after The Husband kisses me goodbye and escapes to his scheduled Chi Gung session in South Melbourne.
“Are you alright?” he begins, his hand comfortingly on my arm. I nod. We talk about what he said to F, and what I’ll say to F, and how I lost it a bit, too. I tell him that we’re getting F emotional management therapy, which might help, and he reiterates that he has good football skills, if only he can manage his emotions.
“I told him that he’s my star player, and that I rely on him. That when he gets down, he’s letting down the team. Because they rely on him for morale.”
There are no words for my appreciation, but I do my best.
We all walk home together – Mum, me, F and the next-door crew, the boys running and skipping ahead, stomping their spiked football boots into the cement pavement. As we reach home, F is invited over to play. He comes home first, to change his shoes and socks, and I apologise a bit, explaining that although I was disappointed and his behaviour was bad; I’m tired, too, and I might have overreacted.
“I only slept a couple of hours last night.”
His warm body is a soft blanket around my chest and shoulders.
“Mum, you should go inside and have a nap, Really!”
And he is running to the gate and across the footpath, leaving Mum and I alone on the porch.
It’s 7.10am, so you – I – close my eyes again, squeeze them shut, and try to eke out another half hour of sleep before I get up for Auskick.
My thoughts are full of work undone, deadlines looming, interview subjects not returning calls, work submitted ... and a dog biting a child on the face. A child who is coming over soon, to go to Auskick.
Once again, those thoughts stubbornly push aside the fog of sleep that hovers tantalisingly close. This means that I when I get up at last, at 8am on the clock (which means 7.45am), I am awake.
Mum is buried under a quilt on the couch, only her hair visible: light golden brown with a bolt of silver at her hairline. The Husband and F are at the breakfast table, eating rice porridge and crumpets respectively. The dogs are pattering around the room, their toenails clicking on the wooden boards.
I am in the hallway when the doorbell rings, and duck into the bathroom, pulling the sliding door behind me. The Husband is in there too, peering into the mirror. He looks at me for a moment before leaving to answer the door. I hear murmured conversation, lowered voices, excited small boy yelps.
How was he? I whisper, as The Husband rejoins me in the bathroom. BND’s father is still quietly angry, but affable enough, he reports.
“He’s here,” he calls over his shoulder, as he moves into the hallway. “That’s a good start.”
“Who’s here?” asks F, bouncing on the carpet outside the closed door.
**
The wind grows colder as we walk down the road towards the oval, climbing the path past the skate ramp and towards the hole in the wire fence. I duck and stand, holding up the wire that runs horizontally across the hole to make more room for Mum.
“I hope you remember soon that I am getting older,” she says, as she straightens her back.
“Nah, you’ve got at least another ten years. Or more. Look at your mother!” Her mother was still tap dancing, performing in travelling revues at nursing homes in fishnet tights, when she was sixtysomething. HER mother, when the show stopped at her own nursing home, would stand in the aisle, holding tight to her walking frame, to shout and wolf whistle.
“Hmmph,” says Mum.
We queue for coffee and carry our stryofoam cups to the edge of the oval, where we sit on a bench side by side and squint across the grey expanse of sky to where the boys – The Husband, F and BND – are forming lines and starting their drills. The wind assails us, sending a spreading chill through my body that settles in my toes and marbles my hands, even as the coffee warms my palms through the Styrofoam.
We move onto the grass, where it is even colder, and I shrug into my (fake) fur-lined gloves and hunch into my scarf. BND’s father appears behind the goal-posts, drinking from a silver column and sucking on a cigarette. I try to catch his eye, then try not to. Mum demonstrates how penguins take turns shielding each other from the wind as I think about the mark on BND’s cheek and watch warily, intently, as F frowns and pushes his shoulders out in the first sulk of the match: disturbingly early.
Needless to say, my early, unwanted hunch is correct. Mum tries to distract me with stories about football matches on the oval at the high school where she teaches as F’s behaviour descends from bad to worse. I watch him throw himself onto his stomach on the grass; wander the oval crying; limp behind the ball, crippled by tears; punch an opposing team-mate in the arm; wave his arms in the air, giving himself up to the rhythm of his wailing. Finally, he drags himself towards us, his face red and eyes swimming, shouting that he doesn’t want to do Auskick anymore, not ever again, that he wants to go home.
I am glaring into the wind and the grey day that I have unwillingly emerged into after a sleep I don’t remember having. I am thinking that I have a dog who bites children in the face and a child who has tantrums on the football field and punches people and that this is the first day of Auskick for Boy Next Door and that his father is there watching, watching our family’s atrocious, antisocial behaviour once again.
“I don’t want to EXIST,’ wails F and I snap back at him, like a rubber band suddenly let go:
“Neither do I.”
Mum, on holiday from Adelaide, on the second real day of her long service leave, looks at us both as I grab him by the arm and pull him after me under the rails surrounding the oval, hissing at him that I am ashamed of his behaviour and that he is a bad sport and that I will be very happy to take him home.
Tears and snot run into his mouth.
The Husband calls from the oval as we stand by the hole in the fence: me on the street side, F on the football ground: just. He beckons F back, and I let him go, on the provision that he doesn’t let him back into the game. As The Husband holds him by the shoulders and talks him out of his hysteria, the team begin shedding their red and black bibs, dispersing to kick a shower of footballs towards the goals in a celebratory frenzy.
The Father who has told his children not to play with F because he has a bad attitude climbs through the hole, his two sons behind him. He smiles at me, too brightly, as he passes.
“Terrible weather we’re having.”
“Yes,” I say, as his sons look at me with interest. “Yes, it is.”
I wave at the mother whose son plays at my house every Monday, standing by the canteen at the bottom of the hill, but she doesn’t see, or pretends not to. When I climb down to join my boys – and the next door boys – she is gone. Through the grey haze in my head, I impute dark motives to her disappearance.
Our next door neighbour chats about the football game and his son’s enjoyment of it before his tone drops an octave, and he addresses the elephant (or dog) in the room.
“I was angry as all hell yesterday,” he says. “When I saw how close it got to his eye. But, as I was saying to The Husband, we don’t want to make you get rid of your dog. Maybe you should get him a muzzle?”
“Oh no! We want to get rid of him. I can’t have the risk of ... I feel sick about what happened ...” Tears enter my voice. “I’m so sorry.”
We change the subject quickly, as he gives his son money for a second hotdog.
The coach pulls me aside after The Husband kisses me goodbye and escapes to his scheduled Chi Gung session in South Melbourne.
“Are you alright?” he begins, his hand comfortingly on my arm. I nod. We talk about what he said to F, and what I’ll say to F, and how I lost it a bit, too. I tell him that we’re getting F emotional management therapy, which might help, and he reiterates that he has good football skills, if only he can manage his emotions.
“I told him that he’s my star player, and that I rely on him. That when he gets down, he’s letting down the team. Because they rely on him for morale.”
There are no words for my appreciation, but I do my best.
We all walk home together – Mum, me, F and the next-door crew, the boys running and skipping ahead, stomping their spiked football boots into the cement pavement. As we reach home, F is invited over to play. He comes home first, to change his shoes and socks, and I apologise a bit, explaining that although I was disappointed and his behaviour was bad; I’m tired, too, and I might have overreacted.
“I only slept a couple of hours last night.”
His warm body is a soft blanket around my chest and shoulders.
“Mum, you should go inside and have a nap, Really!”
And he is running to the gate and across the footpath, leaving Mum and I alone on the porch.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Thought of the day
Sitting in the floral armchair in the corner of the study, F is bent over a 'Healthy Eating' find-a-word in his North Melbourne Football Club Activity Book. I am checking my emails and carrying on a half-assed, half-to-myself monologue.
"Mum," he says matter-of factly, temporarily abandoning his search for the word 'lettuce', "You worry too much."
"About what?"
"About everything."
I take him by the hand and lead him back to the lounge room, where we huddle over the activity book together on the couch, looking for various fruits and vegetables together until we have circled them all.
**
Less than an hour earlier, the Evil dog bit our next-door neighbour on the face while he gently stroked his fur, sitting cross-legged by the heater. Evil barked frenetically as I leapt from the couch to stand between them, then chased him into the laundry. When I got back, blood was spilling down Boy Next Door's cheek in a bright stream as he sat, stunned, where I had left him. It was 10 long minutes before he could remove the red spotted tissue I'd handed him and follow me to the bathroom for a band-aid. His cheek was pink with smeared blood and had to be wiped clean with a face washer.
The Husband was the one who had to explain to his mother what had happened, including the assurance that we will get rid of the dog.
We will pick up Boy Next Door for Auskick in the morning and I am dreading looking her in the face.
I wonder if she, like me now, is awake at 2am, trying not to think about how much worse things could have been if BND had turned his head and the dog had bitten his eye.
"Mum," he says matter-of factly, temporarily abandoning his search for the word 'lettuce', "You worry too much."
"About what?"
"About everything."
I take him by the hand and lead him back to the lounge room, where we huddle over the activity book together on the couch, looking for various fruits and vegetables together until we have circled them all.
**
Less than an hour earlier, the Evil dog bit our next-door neighbour on the face while he gently stroked his fur, sitting cross-legged by the heater. Evil barked frenetically as I leapt from the couch to stand between them, then chased him into the laundry. When I got back, blood was spilling down Boy Next Door's cheek in a bright stream as he sat, stunned, where I had left him. It was 10 long minutes before he could remove the red spotted tissue I'd handed him and follow me to the bathroom for a band-aid. His cheek was pink with smeared blood and had to be wiped clean with a face washer.
The Husband was the one who had to explain to his mother what had happened, including the assurance that we will get rid of the dog.
We will pick up Boy Next Door for Auskick in the morning and I am dreading looking her in the face.
I wonder if she, like me now, is awake at 2am, trying not to think about how much worse things could have been if BND had turned his head and the dog had bitten his eye.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Hypothetical bad mother story
Imagine you gleefully told your son that you were going to mention him on the radio the next morning. Imagine you told him exactly how you were going to do it and then together you giggled at the thought and looked forward to his moment of glory.
When you put him to bed and kissed him goodnight, you smiled at the thought.
Imagine you walk out of the radio station this morning and realise, as if someone jumped from around the corner and splashed a bucket of water in your face, that you FORGOT TO MENTION HIM. You forgot the whole delightful anecdote that centred around him, without seeming out of place in the context of what you were there to talk about.
Imagine you then call him from the street on your mobile as you wait for your tram home, hoping against hope that he slept in this morning. You can't hear much over the morning traffic, but you do hear that he is hurt and disappointed. You can only decipher every tenth word, but you can tell he is reciting, word for word, exactly what you had planned to say this morning, followed up with 'that was what you were supposed to say, why didn't you say that?' All you can say is 'I can't really hear you darling, but I'm really really sorry. I was just really tired.' It's a crap excuse.
Imagine you then spend the whole tram ride going over and over it in your head, unwillingly replaying the dawning disappointment on his face when he realises it's not going to happen, cuddling up next to your husband under the quilt in his mismatched flanelette pyjamas with the stuffed dog he still takes to bed. You wonder how you can make it up to him. Can you mention him on air next time? Not really. This was a one-off chance to do it without sounding like you're appearing on a game show ('Can I say hello to my son F at home? Hi, F!'). Can you buy him a present to make up for it? Let him eat chocolate after school, despite his sugar restricted diet? No. You can't buy his forgiveness. You don't want him to think money excuses thoughtless behaviour. Okay, you need to be thoughtful. What if you go to school and pick him up and spend the day with him?
You know that you're going over the top, but you can't help it. You try to talk yourself out of feeling bad, but it doesn't work. You call your husband, in his car on the way to work, hoping he'll talk you out of it, but - unsurprisingly - you only succeed in annoying him.
Imagine you stop off at the CAE Library on the way home and borrow an armful of manga graphic novels, a Simpsons graphic novel, a Pokemon he hasn't read. You are making up for it with a thoughtful gesture.
On the train, you still feel sick with guilt, but you move on to wondering how this happened in the first place.
Why did you promise your son you'd mention him on air, when you know it's difficult for you to prepare anyway, let alone with a random obligation like this thrown in? Why did you put the extra pressure on yourself? Why did you feel the need to bring him into your work life, make him the centre of that, too? Especially when you started feeling tired just after lunch yesterday and were nearly comatose by the time his two friends went home after 6pm. (The main reason you forgot was due to being very, very tired and forgetting to write down that you would mention him last night - thus, forgetting this morning.)
You realise, with the click of recognition that you get when you hit on the right answer, that you did it to impress him. You wanted him to think you were cool and interesting and that you could provide him with benefits like 15 seconds of fame. You were feeling a bit insecure after not seeing him for a week. The easy camaraderie you shared at the end of last week, when you were finishing each other's sentences and laughing at each other's jokes before you even said the punchline, had dissipated on his return, and you are once again feeling your way towards that easy intimacy, and you cheated and thought this might be a nice shortcut.
You write a blog pretty much all about him and most of your writing ends up about him and you think about him all the time. But sometimes it doesn't feel like enough, because he only spends half his time at your house.
But this is all hypothetical, of course ...
When you put him to bed and kissed him goodnight, you smiled at the thought.
Imagine you walk out of the radio station this morning and realise, as if someone jumped from around the corner and splashed a bucket of water in your face, that you FORGOT TO MENTION HIM. You forgot the whole delightful anecdote that centred around him, without seeming out of place in the context of what you were there to talk about.
Imagine you then call him from the street on your mobile as you wait for your tram home, hoping against hope that he slept in this morning. You can't hear much over the morning traffic, but you do hear that he is hurt and disappointed. You can only decipher every tenth word, but you can tell he is reciting, word for word, exactly what you had planned to say this morning, followed up with 'that was what you were supposed to say, why didn't you say that?' All you can say is 'I can't really hear you darling, but I'm really really sorry. I was just really tired.' It's a crap excuse.
Imagine you then spend the whole tram ride going over and over it in your head, unwillingly replaying the dawning disappointment on his face when he realises it's not going to happen, cuddling up next to your husband under the quilt in his mismatched flanelette pyjamas with the stuffed dog he still takes to bed. You wonder how you can make it up to him. Can you mention him on air next time? Not really. This was a one-off chance to do it without sounding like you're appearing on a game show ('Can I say hello to my son F at home? Hi, F!'). Can you buy him a present to make up for it? Let him eat chocolate after school, despite his sugar restricted diet? No. You can't buy his forgiveness. You don't want him to think money excuses thoughtless behaviour. Okay, you need to be thoughtful. What if you go to school and pick him up and spend the day with him?
You know that you're going over the top, but you can't help it. You try to talk yourself out of feeling bad, but it doesn't work. You call your husband, in his car on the way to work, hoping he'll talk you out of it, but - unsurprisingly - you only succeed in annoying him.
Imagine you stop off at the CAE Library on the way home and borrow an armful of manga graphic novels, a Simpsons graphic novel, a Pokemon he hasn't read. You are making up for it with a thoughtful gesture.
On the train, you still feel sick with guilt, but you move on to wondering how this happened in the first place.
Why did you promise your son you'd mention him on air, when you know it's difficult for you to prepare anyway, let alone with a random obligation like this thrown in? Why did you put the extra pressure on yourself? Why did you feel the need to bring him into your work life, make him the centre of that, too? Especially when you started feeling tired just after lunch yesterday and were nearly comatose by the time his two friends went home after 6pm. (The main reason you forgot was due to being very, very tired and forgetting to write down that you would mention him last night - thus, forgetting this morning.)
You realise, with the click of recognition that you get when you hit on the right answer, that you did it to impress him. You wanted him to think you were cool and interesting and that you could provide him with benefits like 15 seconds of fame. You were feeling a bit insecure after not seeing him for a week. The easy camaraderie you shared at the end of last week, when you were finishing each other's sentences and laughing at each other's jokes before you even said the punchline, had dissipated on his return, and you are once again feeling your way towards that easy intimacy, and you cheated and thought this might be a nice shortcut.
You write a blog pretty much all about him and most of your writing ends up about him and you think about him all the time. But sometimes it doesn't feel like enough, because he only spends half his time at your house.
But this is all hypothetical, of course ...
Monday, July 14, 2008
A hairy situation
It's very strange indeed to send your child away for a week and have him returned with a new haircut. A haircut that is exactly the same as his father's, that makes him look exactly like his father, so every time you speak to him, as you're getting used to it, you have to concentrate hard not to hear his father in his voice.
You don't speak about it, but when your husband nonchalantly offers to give your son a buzz cut, you know that he is thinking the same thing.
And a couple of weeks ago, when your friends and your mother-in-law were remarking admiringly on his shaggy mane, you received an email from his father that said 'Time for a haircut!' When you replied that he looks fantastic, you were informed that there was no way he was sending him up to his parents on the Gold Coast 'looking like that' and had to have an argument behind the closed door of your study that afternoon while your son and his little brother kicked the footy around the lounge room.
Your son's father said 'no son of mine is walking around looking like a rock star!' and you said ' ' in such a way that he laughed at you and called you a child, because he knew what you were thinking. And what you were thinking was that you LIKE him looking like a rock star. And you said that he always gets his way, because he always gets all your son's hair chopped off when he's got him safely at his house, and you never get to have him looking the way you would choose. And you argued like this for far longer than was sensible. Secretly, you reflected that you will let your son get his ear pierced and have tattoos when he is a teenager and his father will not be able to do anything about it. (Well, maybe not tattoos.)
Life's hard enough for him as it is, you thought, without stupid haircuts. 'Life's hard enough for him as it is,' said your son's father, 'without stupid haircuts.' And he meant something quite different, even if you were thinking in the same words. You meant that kids already judge him as a bit odd anyway, with the Asperger's, and that a faintly cool haircut couldn't hurt in evening up the stakes. He meant that teachers already judge him as a bit odd anyway, with the Asperger's, and a nerdboy haircut couldn't hurt in evening up the stakes.
You were also thinking of your own childhood, when your mum plaited your hair in two braids and made you wear a skivvy and a navy pinafore to school, with white knee socks and navy Mary Janes. While the other kids wore tight denim jeans or skirts and striped polo shirts and sneakers. And that it really would have helped if, instead of sending you to school as Nerd Barbie, she'd given you sneakers and jeans and bought you an AC/DC album. (You wrote 'I love AC/DC' on your pencilcase because everyone else did, but you didn't even know what it meant.)
'You're just thinking of your own childhood and your mum making you wear those crazy outfits,' said your son's father, and because it was true you couldn't help laughing, and then you both sighed and agreed to a compromise - that you would take him to get a haircut before it was time for your son's father to take send him to the Gold Coast to stay with his parents. And that it would be neater, but still long.
On the way home from the barber's, you realised that the haircut you'd kind of instructed him on hadn't quite worked out. That it was a bit bizarre. That he looked like he had stepped out of a 1970s clothing catalogue (if you didn't look at his clothes) or run away from The Partridge Family. And your son's father, who had just pulled up at the kerb, fell about laughing as he assured you he would get it fixed up.
So, a week later, your son came back to you looking like he always does after a haircut - exactly like a smaller version of his dad, not at all what you would choose. And you feel disconcertingly like the balance has been tipped and that he's his dad's son, and you are borrowing him. The feeling doesn't last long, and you know it's irrational. But it's the cost of compromise, of co-parenting, along with the impossible dreams to move to New York, or to live in a coastal town, or send your son to an alternative hippy school, or to go back to Adelaide and live near your family.
And you have to admit that the result of your attempt at getting his hair cut was almost as anachronistic as your mum's dressing you up in a pinafore and Mary Janes.
Still. When he had long hair, they said that he looked more like you.
You don't speak about it, but when your husband nonchalantly offers to give your son a buzz cut, you know that he is thinking the same thing.
And a couple of weeks ago, when your friends and your mother-in-law were remarking admiringly on his shaggy mane, you received an email from his father that said 'Time for a haircut!' When you replied that he looks fantastic, you were informed that there was no way he was sending him up to his parents on the Gold Coast 'looking like that' and had to have an argument behind the closed door of your study that afternoon while your son and his little brother kicked the footy around the lounge room.
Your son's father said 'no son of mine is walking around looking like a rock star!' and you said ' ' in such a way that he laughed at you and called you a child, because he knew what you were thinking. And what you were thinking was that you LIKE him looking like a rock star. And you said that he always gets his way, because he always gets all your son's hair chopped off when he's got him safely at his house, and you never get to have him looking the way you would choose. And you argued like this for far longer than was sensible. Secretly, you reflected that you will let your son get his ear pierced and have tattoos when he is a teenager and his father will not be able to do anything about it. (Well, maybe not tattoos.)
Life's hard enough for him as it is, you thought, without stupid haircuts. 'Life's hard enough for him as it is,' said your son's father, 'without stupid haircuts.' And he meant something quite different, even if you were thinking in the same words. You meant that kids already judge him as a bit odd anyway, with the Asperger's, and that a faintly cool haircut couldn't hurt in evening up the stakes. He meant that teachers already judge him as a bit odd anyway, with the Asperger's, and a nerdboy haircut couldn't hurt in evening up the stakes.
You were also thinking of your own childhood, when your mum plaited your hair in two braids and made you wear a skivvy and a navy pinafore to school, with white knee socks and navy Mary Janes. While the other kids wore tight denim jeans or skirts and striped polo shirts and sneakers. And that it really would have helped if, instead of sending you to school as Nerd Barbie, she'd given you sneakers and jeans and bought you an AC/DC album. (You wrote 'I love AC/DC' on your pencilcase because everyone else did, but you didn't even know what it meant.)
'You're just thinking of your own childhood and your mum making you wear those crazy outfits,' said your son's father, and because it was true you couldn't help laughing, and then you both sighed and agreed to a compromise - that you would take him to get a haircut before it was time for your son's father to take send him to the Gold Coast to stay with his parents. And that it would be neater, but still long.
On the way home from the barber's, you realised that the haircut you'd kind of instructed him on hadn't quite worked out. That it was a bit bizarre. That he looked like he had stepped out of a 1970s clothing catalogue (if you didn't look at his clothes) or run away from The Partridge Family. And your son's father, who had just pulled up at the kerb, fell about laughing as he assured you he would get it fixed up.
So, a week later, your son came back to you looking like he always does after a haircut - exactly like a smaller version of his dad, not at all what you would choose. And you feel disconcertingly like the balance has been tipped and that he's his dad's son, and you are borrowing him. The feeling doesn't last long, and you know it's irrational. But it's the cost of compromise, of co-parenting, along with the impossible dreams to move to New York, or to live in a coastal town, or send your son to an alternative hippy school, or to go back to Adelaide and live near your family.
And you have to admit that the result of your attempt at getting his hair cut was almost as anachronistic as your mum's dressing you up in a pinafore and Mary Janes.
Still. When he had long hair, they said that he looked more like you.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
The man date
“I met a Colombian guy today,” says The Husband.
“Oh yeah?” I am at the kitchen table, working my way through my inbox.
“Yeah. We’re going to meet for coffee next week.”
“That’s nice.” Typing away.
“Yeah. I was working on my report when the doorbell rang. It was this guy fundraising for the Asthma Foundation. He had this big card around his neck with his name on it. It was [The Colombian]. So I said, hola, com est as? And he just stared at me. And I thought ... oh no, I’ve made a mistake. So I said, sorry, do you speak Spanish? And he just starts talking to me in Spanish, doing his whole fundraising spiel – in Spanish. I think he thought I was Spanish-speaking. You know, that it was my native language.”
I have stopped typing.
I am staring at my husband in a kind of awestruck amusement. What I like best about this bizarre story is the fact that he’s telling me about it as if this is a perfectly normal way to behave. I don’t want to interrupt or alter the flow, so I just watch and nod, acting as if this is the most ordinary story in the world. All the while, I’m thinking this is shaping up to be the kind of thing I might pay to hear at a comedy club. I congratulate myself on having married such an interesting man.
“Anyway, he’s from Colombia, he’s a student here, and he wants to stay. He’s actually an engineer.”
“Wow, really? And he’s knocking on doors fundraising?”
“Yep.” He shakes his head. “So I gave him some money, and he was leaving, going out through the gate and onto the street, and I thought ... hang on ... so I chased him onto the footpath and stopped him and said do you want to meet up for coffee?”
“You DID?”
“Yeah.”
“REALLY?”
“Sure.”
I have broken the spell. He is starting to ponder the strangeness of his behaviour. I watch his expression flicker and regret my reaction. I was really enjoying this.
“So, what did he say?”
“He said okay. We’re meeting at 11am on Thursday.”
“Wow. Was he surprised?”
He considers.
“Actually, he was a little.” He seems on the cusp of crestfallen.
“I think that’s fine,” I assure him. “There’s nothing WRONG with it. It’s really nice. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
My husband is a softly spoken man, friendly but reserved. I don’t think of him as the type to befriend strangers on a whim. Although, come to think of it, in Mexico he once followed a man in a Socceroos tee shirt while he worked up the nerve to approach him. “Are you Australian?” And he was. And my husband earned the blessed relief of a conversation in English, amid the waves of sped-up Spanish that crashed over him daily, along with the breakers of homesickness.
He must have been driven by empathy – and, maybe, a rare moment of reverse homesickness, for Mexico.
**
I am daydreaming in the shower the next Thursday morning when The Husband arrives unexpectedly through the steam, making me jump in fright.
“You’re back early. What happened?”
“I got stood up,” he says glumly. “He didn’t show.”
“Oh darling, I’m sorry.”
“I waited until 11.30am, thinking ... maybe he’s working on Colombian time. Maybe it’s like Mexico. But ...”
I pat his sleeve sympathetically with a wet hand.
“I guess it WAS all a bit weird,” he sighs.
It turns out that the Colombian was operating on a misunderstanding, a cultural mistranslation. He assumed they were meeting at 11pm at night.
“Really?” I laugh. “For COFFEE?”
“Well, I guess that’s probably common in Colombia.”
“Mmm, I guess so. So, are you going tonight?”
“No, next week.”
**
Thursday morning. I am due in the city at midday to meet friends for lunch. At 10:30am, I peel myself away from my laptop and shuffle into the bathroom in my flannelette pyjamas, holding my unwashed hair from my face in one fist. My nose is thick, my eyes prickle and my ears swim. I feel as though there is a clothes peg pinching the bridge of my nose. It will be an effort for this Cinderella to crawl out of the ashes.
The Husband is at the bathroom mirror, meticulously attacking his beard with an electric razor, centimetre by agonising centimetre. For the first time in days, his tracksuit pants are replaced by jeans and a collared shirt.
“What are you waiting for?” he asks, as I watch him silently in the mirror, the doorway propping me up.
“A shower. I don’t want to fog up the mirror and disturb your work.”
“Well, I still need to have MY shower after this.”
“Bloody hell ... what are you ... ohhhh, that’s right. You have your DATE.”
He makes a face at me in the mirror.
“Where are YOU going anyway?”
“Lunch. With The Godmother and Old Friend.”
“Where?”
“Vue Du Monde.”
“WHAT?”
“The cafe part. It’s $15 for lunch.”
“That’s still expensive, for lunch.”
“A bit.” I sigh and return to the study, where I wearily click send/receive on my Outlook over and over, killing time in the most useless way I know how.
Shit. I was planning to get an early train at 11.16am, to make lunch at midday.
The Husband examines himself in the disappearing glass as I step into the shower, wiping a porthole for his reflection.
“Have fun,” he sings.
“Yeah, enjoy your date. Don’t put out.”
“Even with a man?”
“No.”
“Really? You’d be mad if I had sex with another man?”
“Yes.”
“That would count?”
“Yep.”
“But I wouldn’t mind if you had sex with another woman.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a man. You’d LIKE me to have sex with another woman.”
“Of course.”
“So, the idea of you having sex with another man doesn’t do it for me.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
And he’s off, looking very neat and handsome.
I get out of the shower and check the time. 11.20am. Loads of time to catch the 11.56am or the 12.16am and be at Cafe Vue in loads of time for midday.
I actually think that. These are the words that run through my brain.
I fuss with my clothes and linger with make-up, bothering with eyeliner and mascara. I am too tired to wear anything fancier than jeans, though I do wear my nicest cardigan. I check my email again.
And then I wander down the road just before 12 midday, feeling relaxed despite the dragging weight in my head.
At the train tracks, I see The Husband across the road, with a dark-haired man in jeans and glasses. He squints at me, as if concerned. I wave back at him.
“HI!”
“HI!” His friend looks at me, then back at The Husband, who shouts over the stream of cars running between us. “COLOMBIAN, THIS IS MY WIFE, ARIEL. ARIEL, THIS IS COLOMBIAN!”
“HI!” I shout back. “NICE TO MEET YOU!”
The Colombian smiles slightly, looking a little perplexed, and waves back, his movement as tentative as mine is energetic.
“WHAT’S THE TIME?’”
“JUST GONE 12!” The Husband points at his wrist and gives me a strange, concerned look.
“THANKS! THAT’S GREAT! BETTER GO!”
There is a flurry of waving, then I wander on to the newsagent to buy a new pen.
Plenty of time, I think. I can catch the 12.16am and be there at 12, not a worry. I choose my pen, testing it on the scribble pad on the counter. As I hand over my money, a switch flicks in my head.
“Um ... what’s the time?”
“It’s 12.10.”
Oh shit. Finally, I think: 12.10, and I was supposed to be there ten minutes ago.
I go home and leave a message on my friends’ work phone, explaining the whole sorry affair and that I will see them another time. And I return to work in my study, much better dressed than usual.
My date is over before it’s begun.
“Oh yeah?” I am at the kitchen table, working my way through my inbox.
“Yeah. We’re going to meet for coffee next week.”
“That’s nice.” Typing away.
“Yeah. I was working on my report when the doorbell rang. It was this guy fundraising for the Asthma Foundation. He had this big card around his neck with his name on it. It was [The Colombian]. So I said, hola, com est as? And he just stared at me. And I thought ... oh no, I’ve made a mistake. So I said, sorry, do you speak Spanish? And he just starts talking to me in Spanish, doing his whole fundraising spiel – in Spanish. I think he thought I was Spanish-speaking. You know, that it was my native language.”
I have stopped typing.
I am staring at my husband in a kind of awestruck amusement. What I like best about this bizarre story is the fact that he’s telling me about it as if this is a perfectly normal way to behave. I don’t want to interrupt or alter the flow, so I just watch and nod, acting as if this is the most ordinary story in the world. All the while, I’m thinking this is shaping up to be the kind of thing I might pay to hear at a comedy club. I congratulate myself on having married such an interesting man.
“Anyway, he’s from Colombia, he’s a student here, and he wants to stay. He’s actually an engineer.”
“Wow, really? And he’s knocking on doors fundraising?”
“Yep.” He shakes his head. “So I gave him some money, and he was leaving, going out through the gate and onto the street, and I thought ... hang on ... so I chased him onto the footpath and stopped him and said do you want to meet up for coffee?”
“You DID?”
“Yeah.”
“REALLY?”
“Sure.”
I have broken the spell. He is starting to ponder the strangeness of his behaviour. I watch his expression flicker and regret my reaction. I was really enjoying this.
“So, what did he say?”
“He said okay. We’re meeting at 11am on Thursday.”
“Wow. Was he surprised?”
He considers.
“Actually, he was a little.” He seems on the cusp of crestfallen.
“I think that’s fine,” I assure him. “There’s nothing WRONG with it. It’s really nice. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
My husband is a softly spoken man, friendly but reserved. I don’t think of him as the type to befriend strangers on a whim. Although, come to think of it, in Mexico he once followed a man in a Socceroos tee shirt while he worked up the nerve to approach him. “Are you Australian?” And he was. And my husband earned the blessed relief of a conversation in English, amid the waves of sped-up Spanish that crashed over him daily, along with the breakers of homesickness.
He must have been driven by empathy – and, maybe, a rare moment of reverse homesickness, for Mexico.
**
I am daydreaming in the shower the next Thursday morning when The Husband arrives unexpectedly through the steam, making me jump in fright.
“You’re back early. What happened?”
“I got stood up,” he says glumly. “He didn’t show.”
“Oh darling, I’m sorry.”
“I waited until 11.30am, thinking ... maybe he’s working on Colombian time. Maybe it’s like Mexico. But ...”
I pat his sleeve sympathetically with a wet hand.
“I guess it WAS all a bit weird,” he sighs.
It turns out that the Colombian was operating on a misunderstanding, a cultural mistranslation. He assumed they were meeting at 11pm at night.
“Really?” I laugh. “For COFFEE?”
“Well, I guess that’s probably common in Colombia.”
“Mmm, I guess so. So, are you going tonight?”
“No, next week.”
**
Thursday morning. I am due in the city at midday to meet friends for lunch. At 10:30am, I peel myself away from my laptop and shuffle into the bathroom in my flannelette pyjamas, holding my unwashed hair from my face in one fist. My nose is thick, my eyes prickle and my ears swim. I feel as though there is a clothes peg pinching the bridge of my nose. It will be an effort for this Cinderella to crawl out of the ashes.
The Husband is at the bathroom mirror, meticulously attacking his beard with an electric razor, centimetre by agonising centimetre. For the first time in days, his tracksuit pants are replaced by jeans and a collared shirt.
“What are you waiting for?” he asks, as I watch him silently in the mirror, the doorway propping me up.
“A shower. I don’t want to fog up the mirror and disturb your work.”
“Well, I still need to have MY shower after this.”
“Bloody hell ... what are you ... ohhhh, that’s right. You have your DATE.”
He makes a face at me in the mirror.
“Where are YOU going anyway?”
“Lunch. With The Godmother and Old Friend.”
“Where?”
“Vue Du Monde.”
“WHAT?”
“The cafe part. It’s $15 for lunch.”
“That’s still expensive, for lunch.”
“A bit.” I sigh and return to the study, where I wearily click send/receive on my Outlook over and over, killing time in the most useless way I know how.
Shit. I was planning to get an early train at 11.16am, to make lunch at midday.
The Husband examines himself in the disappearing glass as I step into the shower, wiping a porthole for his reflection.
“Have fun,” he sings.
“Yeah, enjoy your date. Don’t put out.”
“Even with a man?”
“No.”
“Really? You’d be mad if I had sex with another man?”
“Yes.”
“That would count?”
“Yep.”
“But I wouldn’t mind if you had sex with another woman.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a man. You’d LIKE me to have sex with another woman.”
“Of course.”
“So, the idea of you having sex with another man doesn’t do it for me.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
And he’s off, looking very neat and handsome.
I get out of the shower and check the time. 11.20am. Loads of time to catch the 11.56am or the 12.16am and be at Cafe Vue in loads of time for midday.
I actually think that. These are the words that run through my brain.
I fuss with my clothes and linger with make-up, bothering with eyeliner and mascara. I am too tired to wear anything fancier than jeans, though I do wear my nicest cardigan. I check my email again.
And then I wander down the road just before 12 midday, feeling relaxed despite the dragging weight in my head.
At the train tracks, I see The Husband across the road, with a dark-haired man in jeans and glasses. He squints at me, as if concerned. I wave back at him.
“HI!”
“HI!” His friend looks at me, then back at The Husband, who shouts over the stream of cars running between us. “COLOMBIAN, THIS IS MY WIFE, ARIEL. ARIEL, THIS IS COLOMBIAN!”
“HI!” I shout back. “NICE TO MEET YOU!”
The Colombian smiles slightly, looking a little perplexed, and waves back, his movement as tentative as mine is energetic.
“WHAT’S THE TIME?’”
“JUST GONE 12!” The Husband points at his wrist and gives me a strange, concerned look.
“THANKS! THAT’S GREAT! BETTER GO!”
There is a flurry of waving, then I wander on to the newsagent to buy a new pen.
Plenty of time, I think. I can catch the 12.16am and be there at 12, not a worry. I choose my pen, testing it on the scribble pad on the counter. As I hand over my money, a switch flicks in my head.
“Um ... what’s the time?”
“It’s 12.10.”
Oh shit. Finally, I think: 12.10, and I was supposed to be there ten minutes ago.
I go home and leave a message on my friends’ work phone, explaining the whole sorry affair and that I will see them another time. And I return to work in my study, much better dressed than usual.
My date is over before it’s begun.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Away
The ocean sings its siren song in a stage whisper that carries from the shore to our house, a few streets away. It sucks and spits, sighs and roars, sends the salt water rippling out in shimmering curtains that are quickly dragged back again, leaving pearly beads of foam to sputter out on the sand. The dogs chase each other in snarling, joyful circles, kicking up gritty clouds in their wake.
F peels off his clothes impatiently, tossing his hooded jacket and balled-up socks into the wind. A citrus orange beanie keeps his shaggy hair covered; tendrils escape as he runs: chasing the tide in and out, skimming his toes in the shallows, planting his feet in the sinking sand as the ocean forms sucking corridors on either side of them.
We are in our bathers at the edge of the world, the sea and the sky stretching out forever. We hold hands and run into the waves at the lick of the ocean, shrieking and dashing back to the sand dunes and the dogs. We run back again, metres apart this time, venturing further, until the waves slap at my knees (his thighs). More shrieking. More running. And again and again. We mirror the rolling, repetitive rhythm of the sea.
“My thighs are hurting!” F shouts into the descending darkness, as I rub a towel over his mauve marbled legs. “Ow! Ow! It’s like knives! Be gentle!”
His trackies are pulled on, with difficulty, over damp, sand encrusted legs. His bare toes shuffle through the sand, chasing The Husband over the rising inlet and up the hill towards home. I know how he feels, though I don’t tell him that. My thighs are tingling too. Numb toes, numb feet, prickling calves, stinging thighs. A thousand tiny needles dance over my legs with every step up the beach; pricking especially deep as I reach the sandy gravel of the road. I am The Little Mermaid, suffering for her sea legs. Only I’m being punished for dipping into the sea, not for venturing onto land.
**
It’s only 6pm when we venture out to collect our fish and chips dinner, but it’s already dark outside. F plays with a torch in the hallway, flicking it on and off like a disco ball. He shines it into my eyes and laughs when I flinch away. He shines it into his own eyes. And into mine again. I snatch the torch away and set it down firmly on the washing machine.
“But it’s dark outside.”
“We don’t need a torch. There are street lamps.”
There are, in fact, no street lamps. As we leave the lights of the house and step into the driveway, we’re entering an eerie blackness. True darkness. We walk with our arms outstretched, feeling our way forward.
“Keep to the right!” I warn. “Away from the dirt pile!”
I hear F veering to the left. The dirt pile in the driveway holds an inexorable attraction for him. In the daylight, when we’re watching him, he creeps around the edge of it, his sneakers half-touching its muddy plains. I yank his arm.
As we reach the road, it’s still dark, but we can see again. Our way is lit by the windows of the houses we pass. I tip my head idly back and gasp at the view.
“F, look!”
“Wow.”
It’s like static fireworks. Trails of glittering dust streak the ceiling of the enveloping darkness. These are real stars, not the isolated, faint pinpricks of light we see at home. I explain to F that normally we can’t see these stars, because they’re drowned out by the streetlights.
“I know, Mum.”
We walk to the main road with our heads tipped to the heavens.
At the fish and chip shop, F marvels at the ice creams on display in the freezer while I graze on a Who Weekly. We walk home from the bright lights of the shops, passing through a stretch of darkness on our way to the main road. There is a squelch as my foot sinks into an invisible puddle.
“Oh Mum,” wails F. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because I didn’t save you from the puddle.”
“That’s okay.”
There is a long pause as we continue towards the main road.
“We really should have brought the torch,” says F.
“Yes. I know.”
“I could have saved you from the puddle then.”
“I know. I am very silly.”
At home, we dry our ugh boots by the fire and munch our way through mountains of chips.
**
We watch four episodes of Round the Twist in a row. It’s an old ABC TV series that used to screen after school when I was a kid, based on Paul Jennings’ surreal short stories. There’s a haunted lighthouse, an evil real estate magnate who wants to sell the lighthouse to developers, a close-knit coastal community, green babies who grow in the cabbage patch, a little brother with feet so stinky they’re a secret weapon that makes people pass out, and a spaghetti pig-out that ends in lots of vomited-up spaghetti ... that’s eaten again thanks to the rewind button of a magic remote control. F loves it because he loves Paul Jennings. I love it because it reminds me of being a kid. I love the 1980s puffed-up fringes and rolled-up jeans with white socks and lace-up black shoes. I can taste the Milo (three heaped spoons, half-stirred, half eaten) and hear my brothers and sisters squabbling beside me on the couch.
The series was filmed here. The lighthouse where the Twist family live is the one we can see from the lounge room window. You can buy the whole series on DVD at the video store next to the fish and chip shop.
When we hike up to the lighthouse, F stands and looks longingly at it, itching to go in. You can take a tour for $20 per head, but so far I’ve resisted forking out for it. He points at the cottage nearest the lighthouse.
“Is that Nell’s cottage?”
“Yep. We stayed there when you were little, you know.”
“I know, Mum.”
I told him last time we were here, when he and his ‘cousin’ discovered the joys of Round the Twist.
I’m amused by the fact that Round the Twist gazumped Sea Change by a decade with the crazed, shifty real estate developer and kooky, but loveable, community thing. (And the romance between Dad and the teacher Miss James was surely a forerunner to Laura and Diver Dan.) But more than anything, I can’t help reflecting on how Aireys seems to have changed since the series was filmed – certainly, since my mother-in-law bought her beach house here about six years ago. House prices rival those in the city. Tour buses are commonly sighted not just during summer, not just on weekends, but even mid-week in winter – and the lighthouse is a key attraction. And tourists (yeah, like us) are seen everywhere.
**
The whole of Aireys Inlet smells of smoke. It is the aroma of wood fires burning in every house.
**
I am sitting on the balcony, eating vegemite toast and sipping plunger coffee. I am wearing my mother-in-law’s robe, which swims about my ankles and threatens to swallow up my arms. The pants leg of my purple polka-dot pyjamas protrudes from the hem. I am basking in the sunlight that flashes on and off all day here, alternating with shrouded grey skies and light curtains of rain. F stands at my side and we look out at the lighthouse in the distance, the postcard-perfect view marred only by the blocky mansion that seems, from this angle, to climb from its base.
A trio of rainbow birds pass overhead in a shock of primary-coloured feathers, alighting on the balcony rail, barely a metre from where we stand. F runs inside to get my camera. He leaves the door open, and Snuffy rushes the balcony, sending the birds fleeing to the electrical wire nearby. F arrives with the camera and shoves it into my hand.
“Quick, Mum, quick!”
I point the lens and focus. There’s only one bird left. I lean in. And they’re all gone, streaking across the yard and disappearing into the uppermost branches of a nearby tree.
“You were too slow, Mum.”
“Well, I had to set it up first!”
“Whatever.”
I return to my toast. F decides to fish out his own camera and do some nature photography, inspired by my failure.
**
We play Indiana Jones on the paths winding through the scrub and down the sandstone cliffs, past the lighthouse and down to the beach and the inlet. A stone monument is an “icon” that Indy is hunting. F chants the Indiana theme song as he leaps and runs down the path, occasionally veering into the scrub to look for “relics”, which he solemnly tucks away in his cloth library bag, embroidered with his name and a red-and-white gingham star.
“We’re on a search for the opal shell!” he announces. “Chase me! You’re that French baddie!”
I halfheartedly run down the cliff, pausing every few jogged steps to photograph the view.
“Hey! Come on! You’re meant to be chasing me!”
“I’m documenting our journey,” I ad-lib. “I’m recording evidence. Explorers need evidence.”
He considers this, hands on hips, peering up at me from down the hill.
“Okay! Good thinking! Now, take a photo of this bush. I reckon there’s evidence here.”
**
It is just hours before we leave for home. We are squatting on the edge of the beach in the rain, the dogs wandering at our feet, sniffing around the toilet block just metres away. The Evil One's lead dangles from his collar. I am distracted, helping F wedge his wet, sandy feet into his sneakers. No one is around. And then there is.
A tall man in a navy beanie. Broad shoulders, blonde hair just visible, an outdoors tan even in winter. He nods at us, and I nod back, bending back to urge F's heel into his shoe. An eruption of barking and scuffling rends the air, just over my shoulder. I jump up to see the man kicking the dogs off his leg. The Evil One tumbles in one direction, the Good One, who never bites, or even growls, only jumps on any human being nearby as if she can't believe her luck to have this chance for attention, goes flying in the other direction. He's not just kicking them off; he's aiming at and kicking them. Hard. There are terrible, piercing squeals, like they've been hit by a car.
F and I gape as the man strides over and leans into us, shouting and swearing. The dogs run to us and sit still, barking. I am mortified, but I don't know what to think. As I gather my jumbled thoughts, he draws back his leg and delivers a hard kick to the guts of the Evil One, with the force of a footballer aiming for the other end of the field. There is a sickening thud as his foot connects with the dog's underside and it flies across the sand, literally twisting in the air before it lands, dazed, on the grass.
"You could apologise," he yells. "Your f*ing dog f*ing bit me!"
"Well, I would have," I find myself saying. "I am sorry, but you shouldn't have done that. I would say sorry if you hadn’t just kicked the dog like that. You can't do that."
"Well, he can't bite me! You're going to pay for this. You're going to get an $800 fine for this. I could report you!"
"Fine, do it," I say.
F dissolves into tears as he runs for the Good Dog, burying his face in her damp, gritty fur.
"She's a good dog!" he shouts. "She didn't deserve that! How could you kick her? She's a good dog!"
The man stalks off. F sobs into her neck as he strokes her.
"She doesn't deserve it," he cries. "She loves everyone! She just doesn't deserve it."
I hug him and hug the dog, pulling the Evil One back towards us. I pat him, too. I can understand the first kick – a reaction to shock. But the second, calculated revenge kick was just wrong. And it could have seriously hurt the dog.
When F is composed enough to keep going, we get up and head for home. The man suddenly appears again, beside a glossy four-wheel drive. A woman and a teenage girl are shutting the doors behind them.
"Their dog bit me!" he is yelling. "I got bitten!" More swearing.
“Right! I want your name and phone number,” he says, and I see that he is holding a scrap of paper and a pen.
“No.” I keep walking, holding F’s hand.
“So you know you’re wrong!”
“I could report you to the RSPCA for kicking the dog like that.”
“Fine, give me your name and I’ll see you in court. We’ll see who wins!”
F turns to look at him and clenches his fists.
“Well, it won’t be YOU!” he yells. I squeeze his hand.
I know what happened: the Evil One barked at his heels, the Good One joined him – barking with excitement – he kicked at them, the Evil One bit him, the Good One barked, he kicked them both properly. I know I was wrong for not having Evil at my side, but the truth is I’m just too shaken by the big kick and the aggression to know what to do – and my instincts are to just get out of there. So I do.
“I wonder just what happened back there.” I muse, half to myself.
“You know how they say dogs know if someone is a nice person or not?” says F.
“Mmmm?”
“Well ...”
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Their sister has been carried away by giant wasps
On our way back from the supermarket yesterday, at the end of a long and enjoyable day in the city, we passed a couple of buskers: vaguely shaggy twentysomething guys set up on a bench in the dwindling triangle of park next to the train station.
F gripped my arm, urgently.
"Mum! We have to give them some money!"
This wasn't unusual. He likes to give money to buskers, especially the ones who seem to be down and out, or play one of his favourite songs. I encourage it: it's nice.
"Their sister has been carried away by giant wasps!" he continued.
"WHAT?"
"Their sister has bee carried away by giant wasps and they need money to buy fly spray!"
"WHAT? Where did you get THAT from?"
"They've got a sign."
He was utterly earnest. I looked down at his small, solemn face, his hair brushing over his eyebrows and stroking his cheeks.
"And you think that's true?"
Of course, Mum."
"I'll tell you what. You can give them some money if you ask them if it's true."
"Okay!" He ran back through the dark, his shopping bag banging against his leg, while I waited in the pool of train passengers who had spilled off the platform, and were waiting for the gates at the level crossing to let them over the road. I watched him bend to drop his money into the open guitar case; the boys smiling their thanks over their instruments.
"Sorry Mum," he said, rejoining me. "I couldn't do it. If it is true they're probably really sad about it. They probably don't want to talk about it."
"Hmmmm. Yes. And you really think it's true?"
"Why wouldn't it be true?"
I consider this. All the many, many reasons.
"Well ... they're being funny."
"Is that FUNNY?"
"Well ... giant wasps ... it's not very likely. Have you ever heard of someone being carried off by a giant wasp? And the wasp would have to be pretty big. And if it was that big, I don't think fly spray would kill it."
"Maybe." He was unconvinced.
"Do you believe it now?"
"Maybe."
"If you found out they were making it up, would you be sorry we gave them money?"
"No."
"What if it was your money? Then would you be sorry?"
"No."
"Really? Because they're good at making music?"
"Yep."
"So if I told you that the money, that the $1.50, was actually your pocket money this week - all that you have left after paying for the train ticket you lost - that's fine with you?"
"Uh huh."
"Really?"
"Yep."
"Oh." I looked at his perfectly serene countenance, puzzling over how children can surprise you. "Well ... it's not your pocket money. You still have your $1.50."
"Okay."
And we changed the subject, to football (sigh) and continued on down Anderson Street towards home.
F gripped my arm, urgently.
"Mum! We have to give them some money!"
This wasn't unusual. He likes to give money to buskers, especially the ones who seem to be down and out, or play one of his favourite songs. I encourage it: it's nice.
"Their sister has been carried away by giant wasps!" he continued.
"WHAT?"
"Their sister has bee carried away by giant wasps and they need money to buy fly spray!"
"WHAT? Where did you get THAT from?"
"They've got a sign."
He was utterly earnest. I looked down at his small, solemn face, his hair brushing over his eyebrows and stroking his cheeks.
"And you think that's true?"
Of course, Mum."
"I'll tell you what. You can give them some money if you ask them if it's true."
"Okay!" He ran back through the dark, his shopping bag banging against his leg, while I waited in the pool of train passengers who had spilled off the platform, and were waiting for the gates at the level crossing to let them over the road. I watched him bend to drop his money into the open guitar case; the boys smiling their thanks over their instruments.
"Sorry Mum," he said, rejoining me. "I couldn't do it. If it is true they're probably really sad about it. They probably don't want to talk about it."
"Hmmmm. Yes. And you really think it's true?"
"Why wouldn't it be true?"
I consider this. All the many, many reasons.
"Well ... they're being funny."
"Is that FUNNY?"
"Well ... giant wasps ... it's not very likely. Have you ever heard of someone being carried off by a giant wasp? And the wasp would have to be pretty big. And if it was that big, I don't think fly spray would kill it."
"Maybe." He was unconvinced.
"Do you believe it now?"
"Maybe."
"If you found out they were making it up, would you be sorry we gave them money?"
"No."
"What if it was your money? Then would you be sorry?"
"No."
"Really? Because they're good at making music?"
"Yep."
"So if I told you that the money, that the $1.50, was actually your pocket money this week - all that you have left after paying for the train ticket you lost - that's fine with you?"
"Uh huh."
"Really?"
"Yep."
"Oh." I looked at his perfectly serene countenance, puzzling over how children can surprise you. "Well ... it's not your pocket money. You still have your $1.50."
"Okay."
And we changed the subject, to football (sigh) and continued on down Anderson Street towards home.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The shuddering wouldn't stop ...
No, that's not a description of my life right now, it's the beginning of my results from a random page meme Mark Lawrence has just tagged me for (and that he got from Galaxy).
You grab the nearest book, turn to page 123 and post the fifth sentence.
So, from page 123 of Novel About My Wife (Emily Perkins):
The one that's more like my life (from under a cold) on the same page:
I'm really not that sick though. Productivity has slowed to a trickle, but I only dream of abandoning myself to telly at the foot of the bed.
Okay, and a really GOOD sentence (or clutch of sentences) on the facing page, page 122:
I tag ... anyone who wants to do this! Otherwise I'm just going to tag all the usual suspects AGAIN. Come back here and tell me if you've done it.
A good little five minute procrastination meme, this one.
You grab the nearest book, turn to page 123 and post the fifth sentence.
So, from page 123 of Novel About My Wife (Emily Perkins):
The shuddering wouldn't stop, even at home, even in bed through that cold, cold night.
The one that's more like my life (from under a cold) on the same page:
My meagre productivity slowed to a trickle, nothing more than surrounding myself with pages of redrafts and spending hallucinatory afternoons watching the telly at the foot of the bed.
I'm really not that sick though. Productivity has slowed to a trickle, but I only dream of abandoning myself to telly at the foot of the bed.
Okay, and a really GOOD sentence (or clutch of sentences) on the facing page, page 122:
I despised myself for the nervous middle-class grandad routine, getting down with the kids, but was aware of having no alternative. This was me: this was all I could do. For at least the last decade I'd been under the illusion that I was invisible to male aggressors, whether they were my own age or younger. It was the one decent thing about getting older: guys with something to prove didn't give a shit about you any more. Unless, like now, you were trapped on the other side of some bars like a monkey in the zoo, an early evening entertainment.
I tag ... anyone who wants to do this! Otherwise I'm just going to tag all the usual suspects AGAIN. Come back here and tell me if you've done it.
A good little five minute procrastination meme, this one.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Yarraville eatery reviews: 2
Midday yesterday, we did the trawl of Yarraville eateries, looking for somewhere to have lunch: my mother-in-law, her partner, their six-year-old foster child, The Husband and me.
I’m a big one for eating out – especially lunch. As I work from home, I figure that eating lunch in a cafe most days is really exactly what I’d do if I worked in an office, so it’s allowed. And Saturday breakfasts with the newspapers is a ritual I’ve had since I moved to Melbourne 11 years ago.
We had a horrible experience at one place, a great one at another, which inspired me to start this free-form, very amateur, completely self-absorbed review of the three cafes I go to most in Yarraville.
Cafe Urbano (Anderson Street):
okay for grown-ups, bad for kids, patchy service
Coffee: 9/10
Kid friendly: 6/10 (it has chips)
Ave price of meal: $10
Service: 5/10 (inconsistent – can be terrible)
Setting/atmosphere: 7/10 (you can sit in the window and people-watch on Anderson Street)
Flexibility/adaptability: 0 (eg. they charge $2-$3 for extra bread with soup!)
First we headed for Cafe Urbano. I get take-away coffee from here most mornings to kickstart my day. (Once again, if I worked from an office ...) And it’s a good Saturday spot – they do a traditional big breakfast with poached eggs, sautéed potatoes and roast tomatoes on crusty toast. I like to sit in the window and watch the world go by as I graze on the arts sections of the newspapers.
Yesterday, they pushed two tables together to accommodate the six of us: good start. But the waitress was pretty belligerent about not being able to adapt to accommodate the kids. We didn’t want to feed them a bowl of chips. They’d had crumpets at home for breakfast.
Toasted cheese sandwiches?
“Sorry, we can’t do that. We have a griller.”
Okay, no problem. Grilled cheese on toast?
“No, sorry. We can’t.”
But, you have a griller ... you do toast ... you have cheese ...
“No, we can’t. We can’t do that under our griller.”
Bullshit. Sigh. Try again. Okay, we choose the burger and chips, without the egg or onion jam.
“It’s very big,” she warns.
Oh, okay. Split it.
She frowns.
“Can you please cut it in half for us?” I ask.
“Oh no, we can’t really do that.”
Why?
“It’s a kind of open burger.”
So, it’s not two hunks of bread with stuff in between?
“Yes, it is. It’s on a roll. It’s kind of a big roll.”
So, can you cut the roll in half?
“No. It won’t work.” And she looks at us dumbly.
All through this tortuous negotiation, there’s no suggestions, no attempt at all to try to help. It’s as if she takes a kind of mute pleasure in popping up these obstacles. I’ve worked in powerless jobs. They suck. There’s a biggish turnover here. Maybe this is her power trip. Maybe she’s bored and tired and can’t be bothered helping. Maybe she’s stupid.
But we’ve had enough. I glance back at the menu and up again. We exchange looks around the table.
“Shall we just go?”
“Yes!”
I look back at the waitress. “I’m sorry, I think we’d better leave it. This is too hard.”
And we all get up, grab our football cards spread over the table, jackets and bags, and file out the door, leaving out two pushed-together tables behind us. The chairs have been left out. I realise I will want to come back here for take-away coffee and – let’s face it – another breakfast, so I walk around the table and push them back in as I follow the others.
“Goodbye,” says the owner, and I smile and wave. Both of us are speaking through gritted teeth.
Hausfrau (Ballarat Street, off Anderson St):
fantastic food and service, good for kids
Coffee: 9/10
Kid friendly: 8/10 (it has sausage rolls)
Ave price of meal: $6
Service: 10/10
Setting/atmosphere: 9/10
Flexibility/adaptability: n/a (never tried it out)
I come to Hausfrau often. Nearly every day, in fact. It’s an upmarket bakery cafe: stylish, cheerful and cosy; decked out with brightly coloured cushions on the window bench seat; jaunty 1950s aprons as decorations; and beautiful big floral lampshades on the ceiling lights. Much like the famous cake shops of Acland Street, St Kilda, the food is a decoration, too: especially the window of cakes behind the counter, ranging from old-fashioned treats (lemon meringue pie) to more exotic fare (chocolate torte ganache, pear and almond chocolate tart).
We sit by the door, me and the two kids along the powder-blue vinyl bench seat, the other grown-ups ranged around us. We all find something to eat easily. Sausage rolls with tomato relish for the boys, who squint suspiciously at the carrot embedded in the meat (vegetables by stealth!), but eat them anyway. Pumpkin and leek tarts for me and the mother-in-laws. A beef and mushroom pie for The Husband. And then cakes for everyone, the best part of the meal. Our meals are about $5 each, plus another $5.50 for the cakes.
So, we spend less than we would have at Urbano, get dessert, and benefit from the cheerful (and patient, I must say) good service of the staff. After we’ve eaten, the two boys push their bottoms up to the window ledge immediately and sit, hunched over comics on their lap, their feet resting on the seat. (And yes, I peel off their shoes immediately and wipe the dirt off from the milliseconds of contact F’s muddy shoes made when we leave).
While I’m reviewing it ... the daily vegetable soup (revolving flavours) is really good, and well priced. And if you get it to take away, it’s $4 for a small cup and $6 for a large. If you buy a loaf of bread to take home and cut your own to eat with it, it’s a good lunch and a good deal.
The coffee is excellent – and the owner, Christian, is nearly always at the helm of the coffee machine, making sure it’s consistently good.
And the service ... the people here are friendly, accommodating, nice to kids, and when I, bleary-eyed, do things like forget my purse and have to come back for it, they very kindly don’t blink an eyelid. And one of the women there signed F’s petition against the dredging of the bay and has chatted to him about it since, finding out what happened with it. So, Hausfrau has my heart forever, of course.
My favourite thing here is the lemon meringue pie. My mum makes the best lemon meringue pie evey year, at Christmas. Every year, we all hang out for it. Twice now, I have convinced her to make me one for my birthday. Which my whole family has appreciated: TWO chances a year to eat pie!
I took Mum here a few months ago. She tried a forkful of my pie.
"Well ... what do you think?"
"Hmmm," she said, cocking her head to think. "Mine has a bit more of a kick to it."
A month later, Dad came to stay. (He and Mum are separated - have been for about four years.) I took him to Hausfrau. He ordered the pie. I asked him what he thought.
"It's great!"
"Mum said hers' is better. She said hers' has more of a kick to it."
"Well," he said. "She is right."
Feedback (Ballarat St, off Anderson St):
great atmosphere, great service, great food
Coffee: 6.5/10
Kid friendly: 8/10 (they’ll make grilled cheese on toast)
Ave price of meal: $10
Service: 10/10
Setting/atmosphere: 10/10
Flexibility/adaptability: 10/10
I like to alternate Feedback with Hausfrau for lunch. I didn’t so much as pop my head in there on Saturday, but I can’t do a casual review of Yarraville eateries without mentioning it.
Feedback has the atmosphere of a Fitzroy or Brunswick cafe, transplanted to Yarraville. It’s mellow, laid-back and effortlessly hip. (Well, I’m sure there’s effort, but it’s subtle.) My latte can sometimes come with a third of a glass of froth, but the cosy setting, my favourite people-watching seat on a stool by the window and the chicken and leek pie make up for my frothy coffee. And the people here are great: really friendly and effusive but also give you your space. If you want to chat, they’ll chat. If you want to sit and look out the window or write in a notebook, they’ll take away your empty latte glass with a nod and a smile. (I’m generally a sitter, but I hear the chatters in the background.)
One really cool thing about Feedback that I just love: the walls are lined with books and magazines. Kids’ books and grown-ups’ magazines, from Vogue to Famous to SPIN to Time. And they have The Age. F has always been able to come here and pluck a book from a shelf and start reading. How often does a place provide for kids to do that? It’s special.
They do scrambled eggs. They have home-made salsa. I’ve asked them to make me scrambled eggs with salsa (hey, they do it in Mexico) and even though they laughed, they did it – and told me to tell them what I thought of it, because they were really curious. (It’s good.)
I had a lunch meeting here once with a colleague I like and mostly speak to via email. It was our day off. We were talking for three hours and didn’t notice. And nobody made us feel unwelcome. When we apologised (we’d only bought two coffees in that time), they just laughed and waved us off.
Here’s some notes I took at Feedback one day. That might be the best way to describe why I like it, because it’s less any one thing than the whole picture:
I’m a big one for eating out – especially lunch. As I work from home, I figure that eating lunch in a cafe most days is really exactly what I’d do if I worked in an office, so it’s allowed. And Saturday breakfasts with the newspapers is a ritual I’ve had since I moved to Melbourne 11 years ago.
We had a horrible experience at one place, a great one at another, which inspired me to start this free-form, very amateur, completely self-absorbed review of the three cafes I go to most in Yarraville.
Cafe Urbano (Anderson Street):
okay for grown-ups, bad for kids, patchy service
Coffee: 9/10
Kid friendly: 6/10 (it has chips)
Ave price of meal: $10
Service: 5/10 (inconsistent – can be terrible)
Setting/atmosphere: 7/10 (you can sit in the window and people-watch on Anderson Street)
Flexibility/adaptability: 0 (eg. they charge $2-$3 for extra bread with soup!)
First we headed for Cafe Urbano. I get take-away coffee from here most mornings to kickstart my day. (Once again, if I worked from an office ...) And it’s a good Saturday spot – they do a traditional big breakfast with poached eggs, sautéed potatoes and roast tomatoes on crusty toast. I like to sit in the window and watch the world go by as I graze on the arts sections of the newspapers.
Yesterday, they pushed two tables together to accommodate the six of us: good start. But the waitress was pretty belligerent about not being able to adapt to accommodate the kids. We didn’t want to feed them a bowl of chips. They’d had crumpets at home for breakfast.
Toasted cheese sandwiches?
“Sorry, we can’t do that. We have a griller.”
Okay, no problem. Grilled cheese on toast?
“No, sorry. We can’t.”
But, you have a griller ... you do toast ... you have cheese ...
“No, we can’t. We can’t do that under our griller.”
Bullshit. Sigh. Try again. Okay, we choose the burger and chips, without the egg or onion jam.
“It’s very big,” she warns.
Oh, okay. Split it.
She frowns.
“Can you please cut it in half for us?” I ask.
“Oh no, we can’t really do that.”
Why?
“It’s a kind of open burger.”
So, it’s not two hunks of bread with stuff in between?
“Yes, it is. It’s on a roll. It’s kind of a big roll.”
So, can you cut the roll in half?
“No. It won’t work.” And she looks at us dumbly.
All through this tortuous negotiation, there’s no suggestions, no attempt at all to try to help. It’s as if she takes a kind of mute pleasure in popping up these obstacles. I’ve worked in powerless jobs. They suck. There’s a biggish turnover here. Maybe this is her power trip. Maybe she’s bored and tired and can’t be bothered helping. Maybe she’s stupid.
But we’ve had enough. I glance back at the menu and up again. We exchange looks around the table.
“Shall we just go?”
“Yes!”
I look back at the waitress. “I’m sorry, I think we’d better leave it. This is too hard.”
And we all get up, grab our football cards spread over the table, jackets and bags, and file out the door, leaving out two pushed-together tables behind us. The chairs have been left out. I realise I will want to come back here for take-away coffee and – let’s face it – another breakfast, so I walk around the table and push them back in as I follow the others.
“Goodbye,” says the owner, and I smile and wave. Both of us are speaking through gritted teeth.
Hausfrau (Ballarat Street, off Anderson St):
fantastic food and service, good for kids
Coffee: 9/10
Kid friendly: 8/10 (it has sausage rolls)
Ave price of meal: $6
Service: 10/10
Setting/atmosphere: 9/10
Flexibility/adaptability: n/a (never tried it out)
I come to Hausfrau often. Nearly every day, in fact. It’s an upmarket bakery cafe: stylish, cheerful and cosy; decked out with brightly coloured cushions on the window bench seat; jaunty 1950s aprons as decorations; and beautiful big floral lampshades on the ceiling lights. Much like the famous cake shops of Acland Street, St Kilda, the food is a decoration, too: especially the window of cakes behind the counter, ranging from old-fashioned treats (lemon meringue pie) to more exotic fare (chocolate torte ganache, pear and almond chocolate tart).
We sit by the door, me and the two kids along the powder-blue vinyl bench seat, the other grown-ups ranged around us. We all find something to eat easily. Sausage rolls with tomato relish for the boys, who squint suspiciously at the carrot embedded in the meat (vegetables by stealth!), but eat them anyway. Pumpkin and leek tarts for me and the mother-in-laws. A beef and mushroom pie for The Husband. And then cakes for everyone, the best part of the meal. Our meals are about $5 each, plus another $5.50 for the cakes.
So, we spend less than we would have at Urbano, get dessert, and benefit from the cheerful (and patient, I must say) good service of the staff. After we’ve eaten, the two boys push their bottoms up to the window ledge immediately and sit, hunched over comics on their lap, their feet resting on the seat. (And yes, I peel off their shoes immediately and wipe the dirt off from the milliseconds of contact F’s muddy shoes made when we leave).
While I’m reviewing it ... the daily vegetable soup (revolving flavours) is really good, and well priced. And if you get it to take away, it’s $4 for a small cup and $6 for a large. If you buy a loaf of bread to take home and cut your own to eat with it, it’s a good lunch and a good deal.
The coffee is excellent – and the owner, Christian, is nearly always at the helm of the coffee machine, making sure it’s consistently good.
And the service ... the people here are friendly, accommodating, nice to kids, and when I, bleary-eyed, do things like forget my purse and have to come back for it, they very kindly don’t blink an eyelid. And one of the women there signed F’s petition against the dredging of the bay and has chatted to him about it since, finding out what happened with it. So, Hausfrau has my heart forever, of course.
My favourite thing here is the lemon meringue pie. My mum makes the best lemon meringue pie evey year, at Christmas. Every year, we all hang out for it. Twice now, I have convinced her to make me one for my birthday. Which my whole family has appreciated: TWO chances a year to eat pie!
I took Mum here a few months ago. She tried a forkful of my pie.
"Well ... what do you think?"
"Hmmm," she said, cocking her head to think. "Mine has a bit more of a kick to it."
A month later, Dad came to stay. (He and Mum are separated - have been for about four years.) I took him to Hausfrau. He ordered the pie. I asked him what he thought.
"It's great!"
"Mum said hers' is better. She said hers' has more of a kick to it."
"Well," he said. "She is right."
Feedback (Ballarat St, off Anderson St):
great atmosphere, great service, great food
Coffee: 6.5/10
Kid friendly: 8/10 (they’ll make grilled cheese on toast)
Ave price of meal: $10
Service: 10/10
Setting/atmosphere: 10/10
Flexibility/adaptability: 10/10
I like to alternate Feedback with Hausfrau for lunch. I didn’t so much as pop my head in there on Saturday, but I can’t do a casual review of Yarraville eateries without mentioning it.
Feedback has the atmosphere of a Fitzroy or Brunswick cafe, transplanted to Yarraville. It’s mellow, laid-back and effortlessly hip. (Well, I’m sure there’s effort, but it’s subtle.) My latte can sometimes come with a third of a glass of froth, but the cosy setting, my favourite people-watching seat on a stool by the window and the chicken and leek pie make up for my frothy coffee. And the people here are great: really friendly and effusive but also give you your space. If you want to chat, they’ll chat. If you want to sit and look out the window or write in a notebook, they’ll take away your empty latte glass with a nod and a smile. (I’m generally a sitter, but I hear the chatters in the background.)
One really cool thing about Feedback that I just love: the walls are lined with books and magazines. Kids’ books and grown-ups’ magazines, from Vogue to Famous to SPIN to Time. And they have The Age. F has always been able to come here and pluck a book from a shelf and start reading. How often does a place provide for kids to do that? It’s special.
They do scrambled eggs. They have home-made salsa. I’ve asked them to make me scrambled eggs with salsa (hey, they do it in Mexico) and even though they laughed, they did it – and told me to tell them what I thought of it, because they were really curious. (It’s good.)
I had a lunch meeting here once with a colleague I like and mostly speak to via email. It was our day off. We were talking for three hours and didn’t notice. And nobody made us feel unwelcome. When we apologised (we’d only bought two coffees in that time), they just laughed and waved us off.
Here’s some notes I took at Feedback one day. That might be the best way to describe why I like it, because it’s less any one thing than the whole picture:
Bob Dylan is on the stereo, then some sixties crooner: a scratchy old recording. The retro laminated tables and counter are lipstick red and marbled grey. A pink-and-orange painted phoenix squats halfway up one of the buttercup yellow walls, lined with magazines and children’s books. The hiss of the coffee machine, the squirt of foaming milk, the hum of a blender punctuate the staccato symphony of conversation over food and drinks, much of it unhurried, unfurling in the warmth and calm. Outside, a youngish man in a suit opens the Age wide over his table, his pages spilling over the barrier into the street. His suit is neat, his hair deliberately messy, stiff with product. Tan trainers are on his feet. A local activist I remember seeing at a recent protest is kissing her companions goodbye on the footpath. Her hot pink t-shirt complements her spiked hair and fluorescent toenails. Garish flowers run riot up and down her legs. The dreadlocked waitress chats about dance and drumming workshops behind me. She seems, in my long, hazy experience of her, one of those socially talented people: effortlessly charming and at ease with all comers; manages to seem as if she loves her job here – something not many in the service industry manage. I turn back and my suited slacker is gone, his empty latte glass pinning his folded newspaper to the table.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
F Ramsay reviews Yarraville
I don't know about anyone else, but since we became hooked on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, The Husband and I can't help approaching local eateries with the thought 'what would Gordon Ramsay say?'
The local pub is a faux Irish affair that adheres to the old 'charge double for the same food as you get in the front bar in the dining room' rule. Business seems to have picked up considerably in the last couple of years, but I strongly suspect it's due more to the rocketing fortunes of Yarraville itself than anything to do with the pub. It's the kind of place where they manage to stuff up chips and a parma. Quite a skill, really.(The Husband was once served a chicken parma with a large round hole in the middle of it, and when he complained, was told it just came like that. It cost $18.50.)
Last night, I took the family out to a celebratory dinner at the pub. I had just achieved my (rather modest) stated career ambition by finally getting publication in a place I've been chasing for some years. And The Husband officially finished uni last week.
"I'm buying," I rather grandly stated. "It's locals night at the pub." Big spenders, us. "We're celebrating!"
"What are we celebrating?" asked F, without lifting his eyes from his comic.
"Oh, well, I'm going to be published in ***."
To my surprise, he jumped up and threw his arms around me.
"Well DONE, Mum! That's great!"
"And The Husband has finsihed uni."
"For good?"
"Yep."
"WOW!" He turned to The Husband, who lifted his arm for a high five. F leaned past his outstretched hand to envelop him in a long hug. "That's brilliant."
He sat back on the couch and picked up his comic again. "And I have a guitar concert, too."
"Yes, that's right. Excellent."
We told F he could bring three comics if he promised he would talk to us over dinner.
"Of COURSE I will."
At the pub, The Husband and I chatted wearily about our respective days under a sepia frieze of nineteenth-century Ireland, while Today Tonight flickered on a suspended television overhead. (This was the setting of the dining room, the classy double-cost area of the pub. No seats left in the front bar.)
F sat, head down, absorbed in his comic. We tried to draw him out, to no avail.
"You promised to talk to us," I reminded him. Heavy sigh. Eyes flicker up and back again.
"F ..."
I swept the comic from under him and put it on the chair. He glared at us.
"When you go out for dinner, you need to talk to the people you go with. If I go out for dinner with my friends, I can't just sit there and read a book. I have to talk to them."
"FINE. What do you want to TALK about?"
"I don't know."
We all sat in silence a moment. Then, for lack of imagination, we grilled him about school and friends. It had been a week since we last saw him. The social landscape had, as we suspected, shifted a little. One friend has disappeared; a longstanding enemy has become a friend.
"REALLY?" We were hooked. (At least, I know I was.) "What HAPPENED?"
"Well, I don't know. He's just nice now. We play footy together. The only thing that's still annoying is that during tests, he always asks for the answers. I'm one of three people he always asks for the answers."
"Is he at your table?"
"Yes."
"Are the others he asks for answers?"
"One of them. The other one, he gets up and goes over to his table and asks for the answers."
"During the test?"
"Yeah."
"Huh."
The food arrived. F stabbed into his chicken nuggets hungrily.
"They look good," said The Husband. The chicken parma on his plate did not look good. It looked slightly shrivelled. And soggy.
F chews thoughtfully.
"They're not."
"I thought you liked them last time?"
"Last time, yes. They must have a new chef. This one sucks."
"Wow."
F has never not liked chicken nuggets.
"And the chips, are they good?"
"No." He gives a thumbs down.
"Can I try one?
"Yep."
They must be bad, I thought. He never lets me try one, not without stern warnings and carefully picking the chip himself. I bit into one and put it back on the plate.
"Yeah, they're bad," I winced. "They're COLD." And chalky, as if they've been microwaved rather than oven-fried.
"And GREASY. It's all very GREASY."
"So, F, pretend you're Gordon Ramsay. What would you say about the food?"
"Greasy."
"Right. Well, what would you do to make it better? What would be your advice?"
He considered a moment, then looked up from his plate, where he was swirling wilted chips in sauce.
"Get a new chef."
The local pub is a faux Irish affair that adheres to the old 'charge double for the same food as you get in the front bar in the dining room' rule. Business seems to have picked up considerably in the last couple of years, but I strongly suspect it's due more to the rocketing fortunes of Yarraville itself than anything to do with the pub. It's the kind of place where they manage to stuff up chips and a parma. Quite a skill, really.(The Husband was once served a chicken parma with a large round hole in the middle of it, and when he complained, was told it just came like that. It cost $18.50.)
Last night, I took the family out to a celebratory dinner at the pub. I had just achieved my (rather modest) stated career ambition by finally getting publication in a place I've been chasing for some years. And The Husband officially finished uni last week.
"I'm buying," I rather grandly stated. "It's locals night at the pub." Big spenders, us. "We're celebrating!"
"What are we celebrating?" asked F, without lifting his eyes from his comic.
"Oh, well, I'm going to be published in ***."
To my surprise, he jumped up and threw his arms around me.
"Well DONE, Mum! That's great!"
"And The Husband has finsihed uni."
"For good?"
"Yep."
"WOW!" He turned to The Husband, who lifted his arm for a high five. F leaned past his outstretched hand to envelop him in a long hug. "That's brilliant."
He sat back on the couch and picked up his comic again. "And I have a guitar concert, too."
"Yes, that's right. Excellent."
We told F he could bring three comics if he promised he would talk to us over dinner.
"Of COURSE I will."
At the pub, The Husband and I chatted wearily about our respective days under a sepia frieze of nineteenth-century Ireland, while Today Tonight flickered on a suspended television overhead. (This was the setting of the dining room, the classy double-cost area of the pub. No seats left in the front bar.)
F sat, head down, absorbed in his comic. We tried to draw him out, to no avail.
"You promised to talk to us," I reminded him. Heavy sigh. Eyes flicker up and back again.
"F ..."
I swept the comic from under him and put it on the chair. He glared at us.
"When you go out for dinner, you need to talk to the people you go with. If I go out for dinner with my friends, I can't just sit there and read a book. I have to talk to them."
"FINE. What do you want to TALK about?"
"I don't know."
We all sat in silence a moment. Then, for lack of imagination, we grilled him about school and friends. It had been a week since we last saw him. The social landscape had, as we suspected, shifted a little. One friend has disappeared; a longstanding enemy has become a friend.
"REALLY?" We were hooked. (At least, I know I was.) "What HAPPENED?"
"Well, I don't know. He's just nice now. We play footy together. The only thing that's still annoying is that during tests, he always asks for the answers. I'm one of three people he always asks for the answers."
"Is he at your table?"
"Yes."
"Are the others he asks for answers?"
"One of them. The other one, he gets up and goes over to his table and asks for the answers."
"During the test?"
"Yeah."
"Huh."
The food arrived. F stabbed into his chicken nuggets hungrily.
"They look good," said The Husband. The chicken parma on his plate did not look good. It looked slightly shrivelled. And soggy.
F chews thoughtfully.
"They're not."
"I thought you liked them last time?"
"Last time, yes. They must have a new chef. This one sucks."
"Wow."
F has never not liked chicken nuggets.
"And the chips, are they good?"
"No." He gives a thumbs down.
"Can I try one?
"Yep."
They must be bad, I thought. He never lets me try one, not without stern warnings and carefully picking the chip himself. I bit into one and put it back on the plate.
"Yeah, they're bad," I winced. "They're COLD." And chalky, as if they've been microwaved rather than oven-fried.
"And GREASY. It's all very GREASY."
"So, F, pretend you're Gordon Ramsay. What would you say about the food?"
"Greasy."
"Right. Well, what would you do to make it better? What would be your advice?"
He considered a moment, then looked up from his plate, where he was swirling wilted chips in sauce.
"Get a new chef."
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Madness at the MCG
8.20am
Haul self out of bed, where I planted myself in a sulk last night after The Husband and I had a minor squabble that felt bigger than it was. The Husband is up already, stirring his rice porridge on the stove, ready for Auskick’s guest spot at the MCG.
“Hello!” he chirps. “I love you. Do we love each other today?”
“Yes,” I grunt. Back in the bedroom, I flinch as I pull on my jeans from the bedroom floor, where they seem to have absorbed the morning cold. A glance in the mirror, a brush of eye-shadow, fingers through my hair, and I’m out the door for take-away coffee. The Husband and I rendezvous at the train station, hunched into our black parkas.
8.56am
Train arrives. Sit backwards. Feel queasy. Determinedly sulk out the window.
“Sitting backwards makes me feel ill.”
“Oh, is that why you’re so grumpy?”
“NO.”
“Oh. Okay.”
The Husband resumes his serene gaze over the industrial straits of Kensington and North Melbourne.
9.15am(ish)
We walk from Flinders Street station to the MCG, along the river. The scenery is beautiful: bare-limbed European trees stark against the bleak sky; the Yarra a serene sheet of grey glass. Old-fashioned brick buildings, once sky-scrapers, squatting far below the cold modern columns of the CBD in the distance: the old Herald Sun building, with its block white letters silhouetted in the smoggy air, the gloomy post-splendour of the Forum. A Ferris wheel with pink-and-blue-and green seats stands by the river, beside a gelati and donut van and a roundabout, all of them empty. We cross the bridge over the tennis centre to the MCG and breathy voices whisper and chant by our knees, didgeridoo music swirling behind the song. The disembodied voices, indigenous storytellers, are emanating from loudspeakers built into the bridge. My head spins with the paradox of it: the expelled original inhabitants of the land singing over the sodden green lawns of the tennis courts below. The bridge feels quite literally haunted by those who came before us. In my bleary discontent, I am thrown off balance by it. I stop in the middle of the bridge and catch my breath.
“I don’t like this.”
The Husband laughs.
9.35am(ish)
As we round the concrete stadium of the MCG, the conquerors’ playground, I feel that time to clear the air is running out. Any minute now, we will be deep in a sea of parents and kids.
“I was angry with you,” I blurt out.
The Husband looks at me.
I tell him my side of last night's argument.
“Okay, fair enough.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I was just sharing my opinions.”
“Okay then.”
I fear I have overreacted, and wasted a good 12 hours on misdirected sulking.
9.40am
The Husband is crushed when he’s told that the game plan has changed, and the AFL honchos running the day have decided parent helpers aren’t allowed on the ground today. He’s not a registered Auskick coach, so he’s stuck on the sidelines with us. He was looking forward to getting out on the lawn almost as much as F was. He’s been talking about this all week.
F bowls us over with a flying hug.
“MUM! THE HUSBAND!”
I look at his legs, pale and purple-tinged. He is wearing navy cotton school shorts with a khaki padded parka.
“Have you got my lucky skivvy?! Look at my footy shorts!”
“They’re ... great.”
I have a thing about F wearing shorts in the cold. He has no sense of the weather at all, only what he wants to wear. It’s part Asperger’s, part small boy. His dad, who is English, likes to argue that at his boarding school in Scotland, boys wore ‘short pants’ all year round and it never did them any harm. We have had shouting-over-the-phone fights about our differing views on appropriate winter clothing. I let this one go through to the keeper. After all, there are other boys in footy shorts. And he’s going to be running around anyway.
The Husband pulls F’s lucky skivvy out of the plastic bag we’ve brought with us, along with his prized footy boots. The lucky skivvy is yolk-coloured, close-fitting, with a number one drawn on the back with a black permanent texta and a picture of grass and a leg kicking a footy drawn on the chest. Artwork courtesy of F, of course. The mythic game where F kicked seven goals, he was wearing that skivvy, he told The Husband on the phone this morning, so it’s lucky, and must be worn to the G.
I watch him, in his yellow skivvy and navy knee-length shorts and long white socks, playing a ferocious game of handball with The Husband at the outside wall of the stadium. His hair brushes his eyebrows in its grown-out mop-top. I realise, ironically, that he looks like a little autistic boy*, surrounded as he is by kids in top-of-the range official AFL gear and smart, camera-ready combed hair. He doesn’t care. Neither do I, not really.
A beatific carrot-topped marshmallow totters past, throwing a small red ball at the MCG wall. He barrels into the concrete and turns back again, as if on auto-pilot. A blonde woman snatches his ball and puts it in her pocket. I am appalled. How dare she steal a strange baby’s ball? The blonde woman looks up. It is The Stepmother. I’m impressed. We exchange wary smiles and she looks away again, following Baby Brother’s trajectory into the crowd, as he heads for the yellow Auskick ball passing between F and The Husband. The Ex ambles over with his own ball, just for Baby Brother. The Stepmother appears at my shoulder.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m going to get coffee from the van. You want one?”
I don’t really, but appreciate the gesture so much that I decide to have one anyway.
“Sure. Thanks.” I fumble in my over-stuffed bag.
“Nah, I’ll get it. Don’t worry about it.” And the crowd swallows her up.
10am
Kids and parents enter the MCG via different lines. F squirms with excitement in the line beside us. We offer parting encouragements.
“Have fun!”
“You’ll be great!”
“Remember to have a positive attitude!”
We don’t want it to be like last year, when the game ended with him wandering a corner of the vast oval, blinded by howling tears, snot running into his open mouth. Punching himself repeatedly in the head, growling “I suck at this! I’m no good! I hate myself!”. Last year we didn’t know he had Asperger’s, or at least we didn’t yet believe it. Last year, we hadn’t briefed the coaches on his condition, or convinced them of the fact that his tantrums were due to something other than over-indulgent parenting.
10.05am
We sit in at the bottom of the stands, just metres away from where F is training. There is The Husband, me, the Ex, The Stepmother and Baby Brother. The Husband stands up in his seat, his eyes hopefully on the oval.
“What are you doing?” I hiss. “Sit down next to me.”
“I’m looking to see if the security guards disappear so I can get onto the ground.”
“Right.”
I leave him to it and look around glumly, unable to get into it. I don’t really know most of the parents here.
“I don’t think we can have another child.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I can bear the idea of starting again with having to make friends with parents. You know, starting at the beginning again.”
The Husband doesn’t reply. He is intent on the fun he’s missing out on.
10.15am
The Husband and I have moved closer to the action, away from The Ex and The Stepmother. The drills are going well. F is joking around with the kids on his line. They take turns jumping on each other’s backs, grabbing for imaginary balls. They shout excitedly to each other. It looks like there is real interaction going on, not like last year when it was F crash-landing endless jokes against a blank wall of bemused indifference.
‘This is going great,” I say. “Much better than last year.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Baby Brother appears in the row of seats in front of us, propelled by unsteady legs. He is like a jagged game of Tetris: zooming back and forth in one direction, then another, seemingly automatically, often for the sake of movement itself. A shiny red football gleams atop an open bag: a patent leather apple. Baby Brother moves towards it as if hypnotised. He stretches out a small hand to stroke it. The owner of the ball laughs as he pulls it away onto his lap.
“You can’t blame him,” I say. “It’s a great ball.”
He grins back with an edge of forbearance. Baby Brother’s face crumples for no longer than a beat, then he turns and waddles back along the row of seats, into the arms of his mum.
I move to the edge of the seating and take photos. Through the lens, the small figure that is F stops, looks straight at me and waves proudly. They are handing out black and red bibs. The game is starting.
**
And it is sadly, predictably, awful. The four parental figures and one toddler negotiate the maze of seating together to follow the leaping figures on the field to the twinned goal posts where the game is being played. We lean over the pooled water on the ledge of the oval fence and shout encouragement across the ground.
“You can do it!”
“Get in there!”
“Good on you, F!”
“Remember your attitude!”
We marvel at his doggedness, the way he throws himself in front of the ball, under the scrum, his arms clutching for it at every chance, however slim. He is a rag doll, forever flung to the ground, picked back up and flung forward again. Physically, he is remarkably hardy. But it doesn’t take too many setbacks before the first tears come, and once he cracks, he is soon broken.
Normally, they’re not allowed to tackle. The referee, who isn’t usually with this group of kids and doesn’t really know them, shouts for F to get in there and tackle. So he launches himself at the kid and takes him down like a ten-pin bowl. And gets a penalty. Because the coach didn’t literally mean ‘tackle’, he meant ‘knock the ball out of his hands’. And F doesn’t know the difference. He passes the ball to a team-mate near the goal and the team-mate kicks a goal. F was trying a manoeuvre where the kid was meant to kick it back to him once he repositioned himself. So, he was inconsolable over that. There were other moments, including one where he charged a team-mate who had kicked a wide ball to him, stopping just short of thumping him. Once, he listened to me when I said “F! NO! DON’T DO IT!” The other times, I was shouting into a vacuum. Making a fool of myself, I’m sure, but I couldn’t help it.
“You can’t get upset,” says The Husband. “It won’t help him.”
I nod despairingly, watching him drag his feet across the field, pinned by the weight of his melancholy.
11am
At the end of the game, he bleeds towards us, howling his frustration.
“This is the worst game ever! It’s the worst day of my life! My team-mates wouldn’t pass to me! No one would pass to me!”
His coach tries to comfort him, as he has throughout the game, but now that there’s no next step to hurry him onto, no game to pull him back to for a moment, he has come completely undone.
“Come for your team photo mate,” urges the coach.
“No, I don’t want to.”
“It’s to remember the day by.”
“I don’t want to remember this day. I never want to remember this day.”
“Come on, mate.”
F stops to the side of the gathered crowd, the whole of Yarraville/Footscray Auskick, smiling for the cameras crowded on the other side of the oval fence.
“My feet are pinned to the ground,” he wails, holding his whole body determinedly still, his arms rigid by his side, his fists balled. The coach scoops him up in his big arms and carries him over to the group, where he stands him back on his feet. The Husband, the Ex, The Stepmother and I cheer and whoop. We call out that he’s played a good game. Last year, we greeted this kind of behaviour with stern admonitions. I’m still not sure which approach we should be taking.
F plants himself apart from the group, to the side. Separated by a good metre or two from the rest. His arms crossed, he scowls at the cameras.
The Husband and The Ex leap up the maze to meet him as he leaves the oval. The Stepmother and I stand looking at each other. For a moment, we don’t talk; but it’s not awkward, not really. We are joined in this moment. Despair, frustration, confusion, melancholy, embarrassment.
“He said he doesn’t want to remember this day, but he'll remember it now,” she says. “And the pictures will tell the story.”
“Yep. I wish I could pay the psychologist to come here, watch a game, and give me notes afterwards on how to handle this.”
We both laugh.
“I wonder what it must be like for you ...” begins The Stepmother, a little uncertainly. “Do you understand what’s going through his head, what he’s thinking ... you know ... You must understand the way he thinks.”
It’s the first time that she has ever acknowledged that I have Asperger’s, too, and one of the most personal conversations we’ve ever had. Or that I’ve had with anyone outside my family, really.
“Yes,” I say, after a pause. “I do, to some extent. I understand the thinking behind it. But I don’t know what to do about it or what to say or how to help him.”
“I hate team sports myself, I’m terrible at them,” she says. “So, I would never be in a situation like that anyway.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We slowly ascend the stadium, together, bonded by caring about what just happened, by having to deal with the fallout, and by hating team sports.
At the top of the steps, we pause and talk about dealing with F, how much of his behaviour is about Asperger’s and how much it’s kid stuff, and she talks about the division of labour in the house – how she’s mostly with Baby Brother so The Ex can spend time with F. Which I knew, but seems more benign, more practically driven, the way she outlines it. Even as we’re talking, I’m moved by the boundaries that seem to have dissolved between us, maybe not entirely, but certainly a little. And the emotion and interest in her voice heartens me, reassures me that even if she doesn’t ‘get’ F, she does want to.
**
The boys rejoin us and we leave the MCG together, F's family, The Stepmother and I ambling behind the four men.
They pause at the ice-cream van.
“I think one of those would make me feel better,” F tells his dad, with a weariness that is only part affected, and he buys him a chocolate-coated soft serve with coloured sprinkles. I watch him bite into the surface.
“Hmmm, I’m glad it’s you and not me today.”
And we peel off in separate directions, F lost in his sugary consolation as we call out our farewells.
* by this I mean that autistic (or Asperger's) kids/adults often don't care much about what they wear, or about wearing clothes to fit in with what everyone else is wearing.
Haul self out of bed, where I planted myself in a sulk last night after The Husband and I had a minor squabble that felt bigger than it was. The Husband is up already, stirring his rice porridge on the stove, ready for Auskick’s guest spot at the MCG.
“Hello!” he chirps. “I love you. Do we love each other today?”
“Yes,” I grunt. Back in the bedroom, I flinch as I pull on my jeans from the bedroom floor, where they seem to have absorbed the morning cold. A glance in the mirror, a brush of eye-shadow, fingers through my hair, and I’m out the door for take-away coffee. The Husband and I rendezvous at the train station, hunched into our black parkas.
8.56am
Train arrives. Sit backwards. Feel queasy. Determinedly sulk out the window.
“Sitting backwards makes me feel ill.”
“Oh, is that why you’re so grumpy?”
“NO.”
“Oh. Okay.”
The Husband resumes his serene gaze over the industrial straits of Kensington and North Melbourne.
9.15am(ish)
We walk from Flinders Street station to the MCG, along the river. The scenery is beautiful: bare-limbed European trees stark against the bleak sky; the Yarra a serene sheet of grey glass. Old-fashioned brick buildings, once sky-scrapers, squatting far below the cold modern columns of the CBD in the distance: the old Herald Sun building, with its block white letters silhouetted in the smoggy air, the gloomy post-splendour of the Forum. A Ferris wheel with pink-and-blue-and green seats stands by the river, beside a gelati and donut van and a roundabout, all of them empty. We cross the bridge over the tennis centre to the MCG and breathy voices whisper and chant by our knees, didgeridoo music swirling behind the song. The disembodied voices, indigenous storytellers, are emanating from loudspeakers built into the bridge. My head spins with the paradox of it: the expelled original inhabitants of the land singing over the sodden green lawns of the tennis courts below. The bridge feels quite literally haunted by those who came before us. In my bleary discontent, I am thrown off balance by it. I stop in the middle of the bridge and catch my breath.
“I don’t like this.”
The Husband laughs.
9.35am(ish)
As we round the concrete stadium of the MCG, the conquerors’ playground, I feel that time to clear the air is running out. Any minute now, we will be deep in a sea of parents and kids.
“I was angry with you,” I blurt out.
The Husband looks at me.
I tell him my side of last night's argument.
“Okay, fair enough.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I was just sharing my opinions.”
“Okay then.”
I fear I have overreacted, and wasted a good 12 hours on misdirected sulking.
9.40am
The Husband is crushed when he’s told that the game plan has changed, and the AFL honchos running the day have decided parent helpers aren’t allowed on the ground today. He’s not a registered Auskick coach, so he’s stuck on the sidelines with us. He was looking forward to getting out on the lawn almost as much as F was. He’s been talking about this all week.
F bowls us over with a flying hug.
“MUM! THE HUSBAND!”
I look at his legs, pale and purple-tinged. He is wearing navy cotton school shorts with a khaki padded parka.
“Have you got my lucky skivvy?! Look at my footy shorts!”
“They’re ... great.”
I have a thing about F wearing shorts in the cold. He has no sense of the weather at all, only what he wants to wear. It’s part Asperger’s, part small boy. His dad, who is English, likes to argue that at his boarding school in Scotland, boys wore ‘short pants’ all year round and it never did them any harm. We have had shouting-over-the-phone fights about our differing views on appropriate winter clothing. I let this one go through to the keeper. After all, there are other boys in footy shorts. And he’s going to be running around anyway.
The Husband pulls F’s lucky skivvy out of the plastic bag we’ve brought with us, along with his prized footy boots. The lucky skivvy is yolk-coloured, close-fitting, with a number one drawn on the back with a black permanent texta and a picture of grass and a leg kicking a footy drawn on the chest. Artwork courtesy of F, of course. The mythic game where F kicked seven goals, he was wearing that skivvy, he told The Husband on the phone this morning, so it’s lucky, and must be worn to the G.
I watch him, in his yellow skivvy and navy knee-length shorts and long white socks, playing a ferocious game of handball with The Husband at the outside wall of the stadium. His hair brushes his eyebrows in its grown-out mop-top. I realise, ironically, that he looks like a little autistic boy*, surrounded as he is by kids in top-of-the range official AFL gear and smart, camera-ready combed hair. He doesn’t care. Neither do I, not really.
A beatific carrot-topped marshmallow totters past, throwing a small red ball at the MCG wall. He barrels into the concrete and turns back again, as if on auto-pilot. A blonde woman snatches his ball and puts it in her pocket. I am appalled. How dare she steal a strange baby’s ball? The blonde woman looks up. It is The Stepmother. I’m impressed. We exchange wary smiles and she looks away again, following Baby Brother’s trajectory into the crowd, as he heads for the yellow Auskick ball passing between F and The Husband. The Ex ambles over with his own ball, just for Baby Brother. The Stepmother appears at my shoulder.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m going to get coffee from the van. You want one?”
I don’t really, but appreciate the gesture so much that I decide to have one anyway.
“Sure. Thanks.” I fumble in my over-stuffed bag.
“Nah, I’ll get it. Don’t worry about it.” And the crowd swallows her up.
10am
Kids and parents enter the MCG via different lines. F squirms with excitement in the line beside us. We offer parting encouragements.
“Have fun!”
“You’ll be great!”
“Remember to have a positive attitude!”
We don’t want it to be like last year, when the game ended with him wandering a corner of the vast oval, blinded by howling tears, snot running into his open mouth. Punching himself repeatedly in the head, growling “I suck at this! I’m no good! I hate myself!”. Last year we didn’t know he had Asperger’s, or at least we didn’t yet believe it. Last year, we hadn’t briefed the coaches on his condition, or convinced them of the fact that his tantrums were due to something other than over-indulgent parenting.
10.05am
We sit in at the bottom of the stands, just metres away from where F is training. There is The Husband, me, the Ex, The Stepmother and Baby Brother. The Husband stands up in his seat, his eyes hopefully on the oval.
“What are you doing?” I hiss. “Sit down next to me.”
“I’m looking to see if the security guards disappear so I can get onto the ground.”
“Right.”
I leave him to it and look around glumly, unable to get into it. I don’t really know most of the parents here.
“I don’t think we can have another child.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I can bear the idea of starting again with having to make friends with parents. You know, starting at the beginning again.”
The Husband doesn’t reply. He is intent on the fun he’s missing out on.
10.15am
The Husband and I have moved closer to the action, away from The Ex and The Stepmother. The drills are going well. F is joking around with the kids on his line. They take turns jumping on each other’s backs, grabbing for imaginary balls. They shout excitedly to each other. It looks like there is real interaction going on, not like last year when it was F crash-landing endless jokes against a blank wall of bemused indifference.
‘This is going great,” I say. “Much better than last year.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Baby Brother appears in the row of seats in front of us, propelled by unsteady legs. He is like a jagged game of Tetris: zooming back and forth in one direction, then another, seemingly automatically, often for the sake of movement itself. A shiny red football gleams atop an open bag: a patent leather apple. Baby Brother moves towards it as if hypnotised. He stretches out a small hand to stroke it. The owner of the ball laughs as he pulls it away onto his lap.
“You can’t blame him,” I say. “It’s a great ball.”
He grins back with an edge of forbearance. Baby Brother’s face crumples for no longer than a beat, then he turns and waddles back along the row of seats, into the arms of his mum.
I move to the edge of the seating and take photos. Through the lens, the small figure that is F stops, looks straight at me and waves proudly. They are handing out black and red bibs. The game is starting.
**
And it is sadly, predictably, awful. The four parental figures and one toddler negotiate the maze of seating together to follow the leaping figures on the field to the twinned goal posts where the game is being played. We lean over the pooled water on the ledge of the oval fence and shout encouragement across the ground.
“You can do it!”
“Get in there!”
“Good on you, F!”
“Remember your attitude!”
We marvel at his doggedness, the way he throws himself in front of the ball, under the scrum, his arms clutching for it at every chance, however slim. He is a rag doll, forever flung to the ground, picked back up and flung forward again. Physically, he is remarkably hardy. But it doesn’t take too many setbacks before the first tears come, and once he cracks, he is soon broken.
Normally, they’re not allowed to tackle. The referee, who isn’t usually with this group of kids and doesn’t really know them, shouts for F to get in there and tackle. So he launches himself at the kid and takes him down like a ten-pin bowl. And gets a penalty. Because the coach didn’t literally mean ‘tackle’, he meant ‘knock the ball out of his hands’. And F doesn’t know the difference. He passes the ball to a team-mate near the goal and the team-mate kicks a goal. F was trying a manoeuvre where the kid was meant to kick it back to him once he repositioned himself. So, he was inconsolable over that. There were other moments, including one where he charged a team-mate who had kicked a wide ball to him, stopping just short of thumping him. Once, he listened to me when I said “F! NO! DON’T DO IT!” The other times, I was shouting into a vacuum. Making a fool of myself, I’m sure, but I couldn’t help it.
“You can’t get upset,” says The Husband. “It won’t help him.”
I nod despairingly, watching him drag his feet across the field, pinned by the weight of his melancholy.
11am
At the end of the game, he bleeds towards us, howling his frustration.
“This is the worst game ever! It’s the worst day of my life! My team-mates wouldn’t pass to me! No one would pass to me!”
His coach tries to comfort him, as he has throughout the game, but now that there’s no next step to hurry him onto, no game to pull him back to for a moment, he has come completely undone.
“Come for your team photo mate,” urges the coach.
“No, I don’t want to.”
“It’s to remember the day by.”
“I don’t want to remember this day. I never want to remember this day.”
“Come on, mate.”
F stops to the side of the gathered crowd, the whole of Yarraville/Footscray Auskick, smiling for the cameras crowded on the other side of the oval fence.
“My feet are pinned to the ground,” he wails, holding his whole body determinedly still, his arms rigid by his side, his fists balled. The coach scoops him up in his big arms and carries him over to the group, where he stands him back on his feet. The Husband, the Ex, The Stepmother and I cheer and whoop. We call out that he’s played a good game. Last year, we greeted this kind of behaviour with stern admonitions. I’m still not sure which approach we should be taking.
F plants himself apart from the group, to the side. Separated by a good metre or two from the rest. His arms crossed, he scowls at the cameras.
The Husband and The Ex leap up the maze to meet him as he leaves the oval. The Stepmother and I stand looking at each other. For a moment, we don’t talk; but it’s not awkward, not really. We are joined in this moment. Despair, frustration, confusion, melancholy, embarrassment.
“He said he doesn’t want to remember this day, but he'll remember it now,” she says. “And the pictures will tell the story.”
“Yep. I wish I could pay the psychologist to come here, watch a game, and give me notes afterwards on how to handle this.”
We both laugh.
“I wonder what it must be like for you ...” begins The Stepmother, a little uncertainly. “Do you understand what’s going through his head, what he’s thinking ... you know ... You must understand the way he thinks.”
It’s the first time that she has ever acknowledged that I have Asperger’s, too, and one of the most personal conversations we’ve ever had. Or that I’ve had with anyone outside my family, really.
“Yes,” I say, after a pause. “I do, to some extent. I understand the thinking behind it. But I don’t know what to do about it or what to say or how to help him.”
“I hate team sports myself, I’m terrible at them,” she says. “So, I would never be in a situation like that anyway.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We slowly ascend the stadium, together, bonded by caring about what just happened, by having to deal with the fallout, and by hating team sports.
At the top of the steps, we pause and talk about dealing with F, how much of his behaviour is about Asperger’s and how much it’s kid stuff, and she talks about the division of labour in the house – how she’s mostly with Baby Brother so The Ex can spend time with F. Which I knew, but seems more benign, more practically driven, the way she outlines it. Even as we’re talking, I’m moved by the boundaries that seem to have dissolved between us, maybe not entirely, but certainly a little. And the emotion and interest in her voice heartens me, reassures me that even if she doesn’t ‘get’ F, she does want to.
**
The boys rejoin us and we leave the MCG together, F's family, The Stepmother and I ambling behind the four men.
They pause at the ice-cream van.
“I think one of those would make me feel better,” F tells his dad, with a weariness that is only part affected, and he buys him a chocolate-coated soft serve with coloured sprinkles. I watch him bite into the surface.
“Hmmm, I’m glad it’s you and not me today.”
And we peel off in separate directions, F lost in his sugary consolation as we call out our farewells.
* by this I mean that autistic (or Asperger's) kids/adults often don't care much about what they wear, or about wearing clothes to fit in with what everyone else is wearing.
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