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.

On Reading

 I like to read.  So, that’s not really true.  I love to read.  It is my favourite past-time, the thing I’ve always done.  I will read anything, anytime, anywhere.  I usually have a pile of books beside my bed, some I’ve already read, some new, just in case I want to read something right now.

Before I had children, I probably read (or re-read) five or six books a week.  I read fast, and I re-read books that I love frequently.  When I was younger, I read so much that I rarely bought books that I hadn’t read.  I would borrow books from friends or from the library and if I really, really loved them, THEN I would buy the book.  That all went out the window when I lived in Quebec – the local library only had books in French, but the local bookstore had a very good selection of English language books.  Now, I do enjoy reading in other languages, but my primary reason for reading is relaxation, and reading in your non-native language is less relaxing that reading in your own language, so I have always preferred reading in English.  My only caveat to that is if the book was originally written in either Portuguese or French.  I will read them in their native language because that makes sense.  I actually own Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” in both Portuguese and in French, and I’ve read it in English.  The Portuguese version is glorious.  The French version is almost as good.  The English version . . . well, something in the language is lacking.  It is nowhere near as beautiful as it is in Portuguese.  I’ve read several of Paulo Coelho’s other books in Portuguese, and I’ve read one or two in English (only because I couldn’t find them in Portuguese).  And there is always a sense of something missing in the English versions, something that just isn’t quite right.  It may, of course, be all in my head, but that’s how it feels to me.

Now that I have children, I don’t read as much.  I probably average one book a week, but I don’t read every week.  A couple of weeks ago, I read three books in the space of two days.  I started a book last week that I haven’t even got a third of the way through yet. I still love to read, but I hate to be interrupted when I’m reading, and children always interrupt.  Or want to know what you’re reading.  Or what the story is about.  Or why is there a picture of a sad lady on the cover, Mummy? Or is that a murder book, Mum?  Why would you read that?

My two girls started reading the Harry Potter books a couple of years ago.  I read the first book to them both, at which stage my eldest, then nine years old, determined that she was going to read on by herself.  I was perfectly happy with that – my only requirement was that she and I read the more grown-up chapters (the endings of books 3, 4 and 5) together, so that I could answer any questions that she had.  She read all the way up to book six, but never got past the first chapter in that one.  Ironically, that chapter is “The Other Minister”, probably my favourite chapter in the entire series.  When I told her that (we were reading it together for precisely that reason), she said to me, “But why?  Nothing interesting happens.” She declared book 6 (The Half-Blood Prince) “boring” after that.  I think she’s probably still a little young for it (Harry and friends are 16 in the book; she’s now 10).  My younger daughter is now just shy of nine, and she stopped at the start of book 3 for a few months, then returned to the series (mostly, I think, because I told her that after she finished each book, she could watch the corresponding movie).  She’s since completed the entire series, re-read it a second time and is currently about halfway through her third reading. 

The books that she’s reading?  They’re mine, not hers.  I borrowed the first three Harry Potters from a friend and adored them.  Books 4 through 7, I pre-ordered and set aside the entire day of issue to read the book.  I even booked dinner at a restaurant those four evenings so that I didn’t have to stop reading to make dinner.  I picked up each book at 9am when the bookshop opened; I had read each completely by early afternoon.  My husband likes to tell the story of walking through a shopping centre back to our car with me walking directly behind him, one hand on his shoulder, while I read the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

My kids have all inherited a love of reading from me.  There are books all over our house, because they all read (or in the case of the five-year-old, looking at) books anywhere the mood strikes them.  In bed.  On the couch. In the car.  On my bed.  Sometimes in very random spots, like on the stairs or while sitting on the swing or the monkey bars.  Anywhere, really.

The other thing that they’ve inherited from me?  Their disgust when the movie doesn’t quite follow what the book said.  I watched the first Harry Potter movie with the girls and all I heard the entire way through the movie was, “That’s not right!”, “This didn’t happen in the book!”, “Why did they miss <insert particular scene here>?  That’s one of my favourites!”  My husband just laughed and said, “It’s just like watching a movie with you!”.

Once Upon A Time . . . I was made redundant

 I was made redundant.  Doesn’t that sound awesome?  Redundant; business speak for, “You and your skills are no longer necessary.”

The specifics of it were nothing exciting – the mining company that employed me decided to relocate the lab I worked in from a capital city to a regional area, closer to a refinery.  I was “offered an opportunity to relocate”, as were my colleagues.  Given that I worked part time while my husband had a full-time job in the city we lived in, everyone was aware that I was unlikely to take that “opportunity”.  On the day that this announcement was made, the five affected employees were handed two sets of documents.  The first included all the information on a relocation, the second had details of the redundancy policy and a calculation for your own personal payout.

I was in a very lucky position, because I was not the major salary earner in our family (three of my four affected colleagues were the major earner), and because I had been working with the same company for sixteen years.  Company policy stated that you were paid out according to your years of service, so my payout was rather good, thanks very much.

The move to a regional site and the subsequent redundancies weren’t a surprise to any of us, but they came a year or two earlier than we’d anticipated.  The logistics of shifting everything out of the lab we’d been in for about 13 years took a lot of effort and six months to complete.  I managed that part of the process, and on my third last day of employment, I handed the keys to the laboratory building back to the company that owned it. 

Until that point, I’d been in some form of paid employment my entire adult life.  I’d worked full time, part time, shift work, nights, weekends.  I’ve worked in hospitality, in education, in laboratories, in offices.  And then, suddenly, through no fault of my own, I was unemployed.

At the time, I was in my early forties.  I have significant experience in a relatively specific field.  I worked part time, by choice, because my children were young.  I took three months off, didn’t even look at job vacancies.  Once I did start looking, it because apparent that there was a real lack of roles that were actually suitable for me. For starters, there are not a lot of part time jobs in my field.  There are a reasonable number of full-time, higher stress, travel and weekend/evening work type of jobs available, but I don’t want any of those things.  I was considered overqualified for the jobs that I did apply for.  In three months of applying, I wasn’t even called for an interview once.

Personally, I found it frustrating that I wasn’t even considered for some of the roles I applied for.  Yes, I will agree, I had far more qualifications than the job required.  Let’s be frank – I spent ten years at university, so I have more qualifications than many jobs require.  I had applied for jobs that I knew I’d be good at and that I was confident I’d enjoy.  Being thrown out of consideration because my education and work experience was more than the role required was frustrating.  I understand that employers may have assumed I’d be bored in the roles, but I had gone to the trouble of applying, which should have indicated a fair level of interest on my part . . . but apparently it did not. 

I kept looking for part-time roles and started volunteering – on the P&C at my children’s school and also at the local Kindy.  I also started editing and reviewing technical papers for some former colleagues. 

Nowadays I work at a Kindergarten as a teaching assistant.  The hours I work fit within my children’s school hours, which means I can still do pick up and drop off, and get the kids to their (many, many, oh-so-many) activities.  In addition to my own kids, I’ll often have an extra child or two to take to said activities (my friends and I remain committed to the notion of sharing the load when it comes to getting our kids to and from activities).  I’m finding too that the older my children get, the more just-being-around time there needs to be.  When they were toddlers, they’d tell me their entire life story in the twenty minutes it took me to cook dinner.  Now that they’re older, I find they might need to hang about and not talk for a while (and then be asked the right questions) before they’re ready to tell me about something from their day.

In all honesty, I always enjoyed the work that I did.  I would never have chosen to quit my job, because I did find it interesting and challenging.  Redundancy gave me the chance to spend more time with my kids as they got older, and that has been a lot of fun.