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.