My tiny love story

I've been watching Modern Love on Amazon Prime.  If you're unaware, it's a series of unrelated love stories, based on essays written for a column in the New York Times by the same name.  The New York Times also has a column called "Tiny Love Stories", which asks people to write their love story in under 100 words.

I tried it.  Didn't think I could do it.  Turns out I could.  My first hand-written draft was 89 words long.  I modified slightly when I typed it out, and now it's 90 words.

At 21 we shared a chemistry class and a fume cupboard.  The year we turned 23, we shared our first kiss.  At 25, we shared a surname and a plan for a life just for two.  At 27 we shared a move across the country, at 30 one halfway around the world. By 41, we shared three children and a house in the suburbs.  And this year, at 46, we have shared over half our lives with each other.  Our shared life is longer that the part we didn’t share.

Locking it down

 We're in lockdown.  Again.  It's the fourth one so far this year.  On the plus side, our lockdowns tend to be short ones (the three others in January, April and June were all three or four days long).  For the moment, this lockdown (which started on Saturday at 4pm) is supposed to last eight days, providing infection numbers stay under control.  Given that this is a Delta outbreak, it might take longer than that.

This outbreak has involved school children and some teachers, and has sent students and immediate families from (at last count) five separate schools into 14 days quarantine.  Given that literally everyone I know is only one or two degrees of separation from one or more of those five schools, there is the potential for a lot more infections and a longer lockdown.  But we shall see.

My children, however, have seen the bright side in this.  They all slept in.  The girls got to use computers (luckily we have two laptops) to do their Mathletics and some writing.  They also both decided to do a "research project" and to write me a presentation about it.  Kid 1 presented on Vegemite.  Kid 2 went for "Foods I Love".  Kid 3 (who is still learning to read and write) did some drawings, attempted to write a letter (he got bored before it was done) and used an art app for a while.  And then they all did some artwork, painting big pieces of cardboard in multiple colours.  They are currently all reading quietly together.

Again, we're very lucky in all of this.  I'm a casual employee, so I won't work or get paid this week, but my husband can easily work from home.  We've got the space to have a home office plus room for the kids to do their school work where I can supervise.  We've got a decent sized yard and plenty of things for them to play with.  All the grocery stores are still open (and delivering), so we're not going to run out of food.  And the weather is warm enough that the house is opened up and the kids can play inside or out.

Other people are not us lucky.  A lot of people won't be able to work, won't get paid.  People may be isolated, or be stuck apart from their family.   And a lot of others have been quarantined. The Ekka (the Brisbane Agricultural Show) was due to be held in August, and it was cancelled today.  There will be implications for a lot of people from this.  Lockdown will hopefully limit the outbreak, but it has a number of downsides.  And it's hard to know how to best measure the effectiveness of the handling of COVID outbreaks.  Is it the lowest possible number of infections?  Particular economic outcomes?  Opening of business and larger events?  

People keep talking about "getting back to normal", but I don't think that's ever really going to happen.  We're just going to have to get used to some new level of normal.

On Motherhood

 My mother always says that her greatest achievements are her three children.  This is not to say that she was a helicopter parent, or the type of person who tried to (re)live her life through us.  She did not get any vicarious “see what I am responsible for” pleasure from any of our achievements, nor did she ever push us towards any activity or group because she’d wished for the chance herself as a child.  Even when we wanted to do things she really, really didn’t want us to do (like that time I decided that spending a year on exchange in Brasil was a great idea), she always supported us.  Unconditionally.  She simply wanted us to have all the chances and the choices that were possible, and she did everything she could to manage family life to make these things possible.

When I was a kid, I felt like we had pretty much everything we wanted and needed.  As an adult, I now understand that there was a lot of budgeting and being careful and going without unnecessary items to make sure that all the financial things worked out correctly. 

My mother was a stay-at-home parent; my father was the one who earned the money.  They’d agreed on this principle prior to marriage and stuck to it for our childhoods.  Relatively recently, my mum and I were talking about my Nan (her mother), who’d been a full-time working (single) parent from the time my mother was 11 or so.  “I decided then,” my mother told me, “that if it was at all possible, I’d always be at home with my children when they were there.  Always.”

My Nan was a working parent by necessity – my mother’s father died when she was young, and there were pretty limited social services to help widows and families in 1960s Australia.  My Nan was also an exceptional mother, and an excellent example of a brilliant human being.  My mother and my aunt never wanted for anything essential, and they always knew that their mother would be home with them if she could . . . but at the time, my Nan had to have a job.

And so we cut to the mid-1970s when I was born.  My parents were living in a town in the Western Australian desert, where my father worked at the local airport.  He was an electrician, and his employment worked on two-year cycles – he was always employed by the same corporation, but it wasn’t always in the same location.  He’d been in Perth for a while, Darwin for two years after that, then it was off to a place called Meekatharra.  That’s where they were living when I arrived, but medical complications required a relocation via the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and I was born in Perth.  And that’s another thing that my mother, my eldest daughter and I have in common – birth marred by medical circumstance.  My mother was born by emergency caesarean at seven months, my birth was precluded by medical airlift to a specialist hospital, and my eldest was born with pneumonia and not breathing and spent four days in Special Care after birth.

I cannot remember a time in my life where my mother didn’t tell everyone how amazing I was.  And not just me – when my sister and then my brother came along, she talked them up with the same level of cheerful supportiveness as she did me.  When we each got married, she then added our spouses to her “let me tell you about my amazing children” repertoire.  And when the grandchildren came along . . . well, she continued just as before.  Actually, she’s probably more effervescent in her commentary about the grandchildren.  She will often regale me with stories of my nephews (the eldest belonging to my brother and his wife, the two younger belonging to my sister and her husband), telling me how fantastically well (insert nephew’s name here) has been doing at (insert sport, activity, job here) and how proud she is of him.  It doesn’t matter if I’ve heard this from said nephew’s mother or father, she has to give me her (always slightly more shiny and amazing) version of events.  Having compared notes with my sister and brother, I know she does the same thing with my three children to them. 

Pre-smart phones, my mother carried a “brag book” with her.  There were at least a couple of photos of each of us (children, children-in-law, grandchildren) and she would pull it out at every given opportunity to tell people (mostly people she knew; occasionally random friendly strangers) about one or many of us.  Now she has a phone with stored photographs, she uses that instead. 

I asked her once what she did if someone told her they didn’t want to look at her photos.  She looked at me, genuinely shocked.  “Who would say something like that?” she asked me. “You’re all so interesting – of course they want to hear about you!”

The Fiction and the Furious

 I occasionally do the Australian Writers'Centre Furious Fiction Challenge for a bit of fun.  This one was written for a challenge from late last year, but never submitted (because I forgot to submit it.  Not because I didn't finish it).

Room 254.  Basic room.  Two single beds, zipped together as a double, small bathroom without a bath.  The fridge was tucked under a shelf, the electric kettle sitting on the bathroom bench.  The window was open, the plastic blind tapping a rhythm on the window frame as the breeze pushed it back and forth.  The guests had checked in and headed straight for the beach, their shared suitcase left open on the bed.  They’d clearly ignored the sign requesting “bath towels not be taken to the beach”, because there were none left in the bathroom.

Room 986.  Family suite.  Two bedrooms, with a queen-sized bed in one, two singles in the other and a pull-out couch in the sitting area.  Small kitchenette in one corner, bathroom with a shower over a relatively small bath.  They had stored their luggage in the wardrobes.  The fridge held three bananas, a tub of yogurt and some cider.

Room 1209.  Premier suite.  One bedroom with a King bed, a bathroom with a two-person bath in the corner and double jets in the shower.   The furnishings were rich and soft, mostly creams, with accents of sapphire blue.  Judging from the clothing in the closet, the female guest was a decade younger than her male companion.  The bouquets in the suite each contained two dozen roses.

P-100.  The Penthouse.  The hotel’s largest suite; three bedrooms, two bathrooms and two sitting areas.  The kitchen had a butler’s pantry and a tiny, gloomy elevator for staff.  The art on the walls was original – several abstract paintings and a photograph of the hotel from the 1920s.  The Penthouse had been occupied by the same guest for two months, an American working at one of the local fashion houses.  She was rarely seen, and she insisted that her room was serviced in a two-hour window while she was at work.  Cleaning her room took the entire two hours each day – she was a heavy smoker, an even heavier drinker and she regularly had several guests in her room overnight.

The lobby.  Reception staffed twenty-four hours a day by staff who spoke a minimum of six languages, a bar and a restaurant to the left.  Security at the front door were discretely armed and uniformed similarly to the police, with the hotel crest on the collar.

He nodded to security as he left the hotel, wishing them a good day.  No one stopped him.  No one checked his backpack.  He was in uniform.  He worked here.  He was safe.

The uniform had been stolen from the hotel’s laundry, the security pass snatched off a maid’s trolley, the photograph replaced with his own.  His backpack contained a watch from room 254, a necklace and three sets of earrings from 986, a camera from the suite and gold bracelet from the Penthouse.  He’d pass them to an associate before changing uniform and name and doing the same job elsewhere.  He had several uniforms.  It was an interesting way to make a living. 

On Fatherhood

 On our way home from Canada over a decade ago, we flew via Europe for a site visit to a refinery (as you do).  We decided to take advantage of being in London and took a week’s holiday to catch up with people we knew – a friend of mine in London, my sister and her husband in Bristol and an old university friend of ours who lived in Limerick. 

Our friend in Limerick was a new father – his son was four months old.  I remember sitting around one evening chatting, and he was talking about something he’d noticed about parenting.

“Men,” he said, “can be a dad or a good dad.  Women get to be a mum or a bad mum.”

The further into parenting that I get, the more I realise the truth in that statement.  When I am volunteering in my son’s classroom, I’m just being a mum.  A dad who volunteers will be congratulated on being a “good dad” for being there.  He doesn’t even need to do anything to be the good dad – he just has to show up.  My husband is often told what a good dad he is by random strangers when he’s at the park with a kid or two.  I can be doing errands with all three of my children (and occasionally an extra or two, just for fun), and I’m rarely told I’m a good mum. I’m far more likely to hear muttered comments about an even mildly misbehaving child than I am to get a compliment about my children or my parenting.

From what I’ve seen in my eleven years as a parent, people in general still have much higher expectations for mothers than they do for fathers.  Mothers are expected to have their (neat and tidy, well-behaved) children to school and activities and appointments on time, all the while keeping the house clean and organised, the shopping done (with children in tow, if necessary) and a home-cooked dinner on the table at the appropriate time.  If she’s got a (paying) job of any description, that’s expected to fit in there too, along with the unspoken notion that she should be the one staying home with a sick child if needs be.  For a father, the threshold is far lower – the children need to be fed and cared for (take-away fine, home-cooked meals optional), and if they miss a few appointments or come to school late (in the wrong uniform from an untidy house), well, “he’s trying so hard to get it all done.” People are also far more likely to congratulate a father for anything parenting-related than they are a mother. 

The other thing that drives me mad in the mother/father comparison, is when someone refers to a man as “babysitting” his children.  He’s not babysitting – he’s caring for his children. Maybe this is linked to the reasons why people are more likely to compliment a father who is with his children – they’re considering it as babysitting – another job that he has taken on as well as all the other things he has to do.  They’re not necessarily considering his role as a parent, and in some cases are almost diminishing it – “Oh, isn’t that sweet?  He’s babysitting!”.

I have absolutely zero issues with any parent or carer being complimented on their parenting, their children or anything related to either.  In fact, I think it’s essential that we do it – parenting (particularly when you’re the primary parent) can be hard, lonely and sometimes monotonous work.  Having someone tell you you’re doing a good job is such a lovely thing. 

One good thing that COVID has done has left so many more parents and carers working from home, and nowadays there are almost as many men as women at school pick up.  It’s been interesting to hear comments from the fathers who’ve found themselves working from home – so many of the dads that I know have negotiated working from home at least part-time post-COVID because they realized how much it helps everyday family life, and how much they enjoy having a more active role in it. 

My husband is one of these – 18 months ago, he worked full-time in the city, leaving home by 6.30am to catch the train, getting home around 5pm.  He’d always have breakfast with our son (he’s an early riser), but it wasn’t uncommon for him to leave for work before our daughters were awake.  He didn’t get home until after the majority of after-school activities were done, and usually his evening time with the kids involved having dinner and reading a story or two.  There wasn’t a lot of time for much else.

During COVID, he worked from home full-time; once his office re-opened, he could choose up to 50% work from home, with relatively flexible choice about how that was structured.  My husband now works from home half the time, three days one week, two days the next.  It means that he can start work early, yet still see the girls before school (he’ll have a coffee with them while they’re eating breakfast).  If one of the kids is sick and I have to work, he can generally reorganize his days to stay at home with them.  He’ll still work, mind you, but his office door is always open to whoever’s home sick.  On the days that he’s working from home, I can leave a kid or two with him while I take another one (or two) to activities.  A couple of weeks ago, I had to take one of the kids to an enrolment interview, and there was no way I could be home in time to get the other two to school, but he was home, so he could do school drop off.  And every fortnight, when he’s home on Friday and the kids are at school, he and I go out for lunch.  Together.  Where we can talk (or sit and enjoy the silence) and just hang out. 

Who knows – maybe a post-COVID world will have more fathers being more visible in their children’s day-to-day lives; at school drop off, taking them to the dentist, doing the grocery shopping with a toddler.  Maybe that’ll make the notion of a father with his kids no more or less remarkable than a mother with hers.  Either way, when the chance presents itself, always be sure to pass on a compliment to whichever parent you see.  No matter which parent it is, they’ll appreciate it.

The Extracurriculars

When my eldest daughter was born, I declared that I was not going to be one of Those Parents who was constantly running from activity to activity with my child.  She would not be doing All The Things.  We would be careful and choose an activity wisely.

When she was little, we had a regular Mothers’ Group catch-up, but that was as much for me as it was for her.  We also did baby swimming lessons (with my Mothers’ Group friends).  And that was it.  

When Kid 2 came along, the Mothers’ Group catch-ups were far less frequent (most of us were back at work at least part-time, we each had a second child within a few years of the first, and two of us wound up with three), but we stuck with the swimming lessons.  The entire time she was in the baby class (requiring me to be in the water with her), I managed to get the two girls into a lesson at the same time – Kid 1 with her own teacher, Kid 2 with me.  Both girls eventually did a weekly class (soccer for one, dance for the other) at daycare, but that was all.

Our son came along at the end of my eldest daughter's first year at primary school.  We’d purposely taken a break from swimming for her first year of school and hadn’t taken on anything else.  Every week or so, we’d get another flyer come home from school, advertising yet another organised sport or club.  There was soccer, swimming, tennis, netball, drama, singing, instrument lessons . . . there was a huge variety of options.  And eventually the girls wanted to try new things.

At first, my rule was swimming and one other activity.  Soon that became two activities, plus swimming.  Then it was “Well, you can do swimming at school, and anything else has to be at school or within walking distance”.  

And this is how it has come to pass that now Kid 1 does four extracurricular activities, Kid 2 does five and Kid 3 does two.  There is one overlap (the girls are both in the same singing class), a Saturday class that my husband has responsibility for and a couple where I take another child to an activity in return for another parent bringing my kid home.  This still means two days with both a before- and an after-school activity, and one day with four separate after-school extracurriculars.  I’ve only got three children – Kid 2 has two activities on the same afternoon.  Happily, the drop off/pick up times on all four activities line up perfectly, so it’s not too bad . . . although I do walk five kilometres that day and leave the house on five separate occasions because of my children.  

The kids do a reasonable spread of activities – all three of them sing and the girls both do drama and play an instrument (violin for the eldest, flute for Kid 2), plus my eldest does an art class, the middle one takes tennis and Kung Fu and the little guy does a movement and balance class. 

I started with good intentions of not doing too much . . . but here we are.  At least they’re all having fun!

 

When you hear That Song

 In very, very late 1999, my now-husband flew to meet me in Brasil.  I’d been there for five weeks prior; the two of us spent three weeks there together.  It was an awesome holiday.  One of my favourites.  Really.

But this isn’t about the holiday.  It’s about the trip home.  We’d flown there separately, but we came home together.  São Paulo to Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Perth.  Mid-January, 2000.

When we got on the plane in São Paulo, it was immediately clear to me that there were exchange students (approximately a dozen of them) on our flight, heading home to South Africa after 12 months in Brasil.  They were all with the same exchange program (it was definitely not Rotary, possibly AFS, maybe some other group I was unfamiliar with), seated in a big group a few rows behind us.  I was six years past the experience of flying home from exchange, but I recognized them the moment that I saw them.  They all spoke to each other in English, but their accent wasn’t (only) South African anymore – they’d all had their English changed after a year in Brasil.  The change was different for each of them, but it was a clear and genuine change of accent.  For some, it was only on a few words. For others, it was on everything; an edge that changed every single pronunciation.  Every one of them dropped Portuguese words into their conversations – not an affectation of any sort; a genuine “this is the right word” feeling that didn’t even allow them to understand that they weren’t speaking English when they said it.  Absolutely no one called them on any Portuguese word in an English sentence – my guess would be that they were all still thinking in both Portuguese and English and didn’t even notice that any of the words weren’t English.  And every single one of them (even the late-teen boys) were visibly sad (and many were openly crying) as the plane took off.

I knew who they all were because I’d been them a few years earlier.  And everyone else on the flight knew them a little later, in between movies when there was only background music playing.  Specifically “Time of My Life” by Green Day.  They all sang.  All cried.  All hugged each other and remembered the many, many times they’d heard that song when they’d been in Brasil.  Even the ones who’d not seen each other between their flights to Brasil in January 1999 and their flights home in January 2000.  It was That Song.  The one they’ll always, absolutely always, remember.

For me, That Song is “What’s Up?” by The Four Non-Blondes.  I’m 46 now; 28 years past my return from Brasil.  And even now, 28 years on, that song reminds me of Brasil, and very, very specifically of my best friend (another exchange student), my host brother (who’d previously been on exchange to New Zealand) and of one of the guys I went to school with (who was my only Brasilian friend who knew all the words to the song in English).  Every time I hear that song, I remember my favourite dancing shoes (black, strappy platform Mary Janes with a curved heel and double buckles), my favourite shirt (midriff, twisted up in the middle with bell-bottom sleeves) and the red-and-white striped dress that I bought especially for New Year’s Eve.  I see the river (called Green, actually brown) that I walked over on my way home in the last four months of my exchange.  I see the church that was across the road from my second house.  I remember the walk up the hill to my first family’s home.  I see the praça (square) in town and remember dancing in the Club with the balcony that overlooked it.  There are so many memories associated with that one song, and they’ve all persisted, nearly three decades later, whenever I hear that song.