Living Away

 I’m the eldest of three, and the third of five grandchildren on my mother’s side.  Although my Nan’s family is large (she was the third of nine; my mother has 27 maternal first cousins), our particular branch of said family is not especially big.  My parents grew up in almost adjoining suburbs; they met at a church youth group when  Mum was 11 and Dad was 14.  They dated on and off from the time she was 14 or so and married just shy of her 21st birthday.

My mother’s sister had two children, each of them had two children, and the eldest of those grandchildren has a child as well.  My siblings and I have six children between us.  My dad had two sisters, and I have five cousins from his side.  My aunts and their families always lived on the opposite side of the country to my parents, so I’ve never met two of those cousins, and the most recently that I saw any of the older three was nearly 20 years ago.  Between those five cousins there are at least six children, but, again, I’ve never met them. 

Growing up, my family spent a lot of time living relatively distant to the rest of the family.  The maternal side of the family (my Nan and Pa, my aunt and uncle, my two cousins) lived within 120kms of Perth, as did my paternal grandfather.  My paternal grandmother died just after I was born.  For much of my childhood and early adolescence, we lived in a variety of small towns in the middle of nowhere.  Two of those towns were in the desert; one doesn’t even exist anymore.  Two others are on the north west coast and are now relatively large and prosperous (although small by world standard) cities.  We did live in Perth for four years when I was young (my brother was born in Perth), but we in a very outer suburb of the city, roughly 30 minutes from our closest family members in the state and a two hour drive from the most distant.  Even when we lived the furthest away (about 1600 kms), we still managed to visit at least once a year.

My husband’s immediate family live slightly further south of Perth than my grandparents; his maternal relatives are all on the East coast.  His father is an only child whose parents died before my husband and his siblings were born, but my father-in-law had three close friends who were like brothers, all of whom live in and around Perth.  It was amusing to discover that one of these friends was the father of my good friend Pedro, and even more entertaining to work out that when I’d gone to Pedro’s 21^st years earlier, my (then future) in-laws had been amongst the gaggle of grown-ups celebrating inside.

My father-in-law grew up in a small town about 60kms from where my parents live, and he met my mother-in-law when he was stationed near her family home with the Air Force.  After they married, they moved around a lot for his - my husband also lived in a town that no longer exists.  When my husband was about 7, they settled in the same town they still live in now, on the opposite side of the country to the rest of my mother-in-law’s family. My sister-in-law, her husband and their two daughters live slightly south of my in-laws; my husband’s brother is the only one to have left the state – he’s been in Darwin for years.

With the exception of the six years we lived in the North during his childhood, my brother has always lived in Perth.  He’s never lived further that 20kms away from my parents, and he has a preference for more rural living with plenty of space around.

My sister loves to travel.  Entertainingly, she met her English husband in Perth when he was working at a local hospital as part of his medical training.  When he went back to England six months later, she went too.  She married him several years later, and they spent many years moving backwards and forwards between the UK and Australia.  Their first son was born in the UK, the second in Australia.  Both of the boys have dual citizenship, as does her husband.  They’ve been living in Perth, in a bustling inner-city suburb, for over six years now.

As for me . . . well, there was the year in Brasil at 18.  Moving across the country to Brisbane with my husband at 27.  After three years here, we went to Canada for three more, and we’ve been back in Brisbane for over 12 years.  Much of my adult life (and the great majority of my married life) has been spent a great distance from my extended family.  All three of our children were born here.  The only house we own is here.  Our friends and our life is here.  We go back to Western Australia every year or two, but only to visit.  Home is here.

Having moved so much as a child, I don’t actually have a sense of a “hometown”.  I don’t have those old primary or high school friends that I catch up with on a semi-regular basis.  I’ve never been to a single high school reunion or catch-up.  None of that bothers me. 

The entertaining part in all this, however, is the fact that we’ve lived in the same area for the entirety of our children’s lives.  Our two youngest have only ever lived in the same house; we lived elsewhere when our eldest was born but we moved here (eleven streets away from our previous home) when she was nine months old, and she has no recollection of any home other than this.  My daughters have been at the same primary school since they started; their brother has joined them there this year.  My girls have done many of their after-school activities for several years.  They've been in the same speech and drama classes together for three years.  They’ve both also been learning to sing with the same choir (with the same group of friends) for four-and-a-half years; this afternoon, my son will be joining the same choir, albeit in the “young singers” group. 

My children have had a continuity in location and school and surrounds that I didn’t really experience, and I’m quite enjoying it.  I don’t even think that I’m enjoying it on their behalf – I had a lovely childhood and had the chance to visit lots of places, meet new people and move around.  Actually, when I was young, I loved to move house – it was fun.  I genuinely think that adult me is appreciating the continuity – the ability to stay and to be in one place, rather than have to go through the adult-related issues of moving (which takes work), organising schools/activities for the kids (more work) and making new friends of my own (the toughest work of all).  I like the familiarity of it, the comfort of community and the feeling of belonging.  That’s not to say that I wouldn’t be up to moving again.  It would just need to be for a very good reason.

Once Upon A Time . . . I worked in a male-dominated industry

I am a scientist.  When I was at university 25 years ago studying Chemistry, there were probably twice as many male students as female.  That has evened out somewhat in the intervening years, but the industry (particularly the mining industry) skews male.  This is particularly noticeable at the higher levels – General Manager and above.

There are a lot of reasons for this.  Predominant amongst them is what happens when a person starts a family, and how it tends to be the mother whose time at work is most affected.  Many women will take at least one maternity leave break during their career.  Some will take more than one.  Some will return to work part time for a period (or forever).  And there are many aspects of work in the mining industry that are not especially conducive with being the primary parent.

My husband and I worked for the same large mining company for many years.  We both flew in and out of mining sites, sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes for a few weeks.  At times, we managed to coordinate our trips to go together; other times one of us might fly in on Saturday morning from a week on-site, the other would fly out Sunday afternoon for a week on a different site.  We even did a couple of secondments – one a three-month stint at a refinery in northern Australia, the other a three-year transfer to a refinery in Canada.  Sometimes, we worked ten or twelve hour days, both on-site and in the lab.  There were days when we needed to come into the lab at midnight to take samples.  Some shifts were night shift.  At other times, there might be a teleconference with people overseas that had to happen at 5am or 10pm, or an experiment ran over and we didn’t get home till 8pm, even though we’d arrived in the lab at 6am. Travel to and from site often happened on the weekend or late in the day.  This was all just part of the job. 

For the first seven or so years of our employment, this worked well.  If someone asked, “Can you be there tomorrow?” we could both easily say yes.  While living in Canada, I was once asked on a Wednesday evening to be in Australia by Sunday (and I was).  If a colleague needed an assistant for the midnight sampling run, one of us could help out.  If something ran late, one (usually both) of us could stay to ensure the work was completed properly.  We were a useful team – we came to work together, so we’d leave together, which meant that any chemical handling (which requires two people to be present for safety reasons) could easily be managed by the two of us together.

The reason for this?  We didn’t have children.  We weren’t constrained to an arrival or departure time that worked with daycare drop off and pick up.  We weren’t juggling a cranky baby or toddler who didn’t want to go to bed when we were doing teleconferences at weird hours.  If one of us was away for work, there was no school run, after school activities or friends’ birthday parties to manage alone.    

Seven years into my employment with the company, I told my boss I was pregnant.  After the initial flurry of congratulations were done, I started hearing the same questions from everyone. “So, what are your plans?”  “What are you going to do once the baby’s here?” “How much time will you take off?” “Are you planning to come back to work?”  “How will you manage work and kids when you come back?” These questions were pretty much all just out of interest, friends and colleagues wanting to know what I thought I might do.  The interesting part was the questions that my husband got.  “What is Meg planning to do?” “How long is she planning to be off work?” “Do you think she’ll come back?”  Not a single person asked him what he planned to do now that he would be a father.  No one asked him how he’d manage to do his job while being a dad.  The assumption was that his (work) life could continue exactly as it always had, without being affected by his new “fatherhood” status.

Over the eight years that followed, his work didn’t really change.  He would still work long hours as necessary – while we continued working in the same lab, it was always me who reminded him that we needed to leave work to pick up the children from daycare.  He would still go to site, sometimes at very short notice, for a week or three.  If he flew out on a Sunday and back on Saturday morning, I’d organise everything to do with the kids, and then do all of the above myself.  On the occasions where he called to say that he had to stay an extra few days, I continued to manage it.  If he had a teleconference from home, I’d make sure the children weren’t interrupting. If there was an after-work event, or a special training course that we both needed to attend, I’d organise the babysitter or arrange for the children to be taken to and from their activities.

Over that eight years, I had three lots of maternity leave.  I transitioned to permanent part time (three days a week) work.  When requested, I modified the three days per week that I worked to suit the needs of the group I worked for.  If a meeting or a training workshop was scheduled on a day I didn’t work (which happened more frequently than you’d think), I would attend if required.  I would check emails and attend to urgent matters on my non-work days. The first time a public holiday fell on one of the days that I worked, my boss asked me what day I was planning to work to “make up” for the public holiday.  I asked him what day he planned to work to make up for his public holiday.  He never asked that question again.

I was asked to travel for work a few times during those eight years.  Once was while I was breastfeeding.  Another time was for an hour-long meeting in town to the north, that would have required me to leave home at 5am and not get home until after 7pm.  I said no and dialled in to the meeting.  My absence at the meeting was commented upon several times, “Why couldn’t you make it, Meg?  It’s not that big a deal.” The part where my husband was on-site somewhere else, I had a toddler (whose daycare opened at 7am and closed at 6pm) and I was five or six months pregnant did not factor into any of my (male) co-workers’ ideas of a “big deal”.  The only time I did travel was for an induction course that my boss insisted I take, mostly to meet some of his own objectives; “100% of senior staff inducted at the refinery”.  Because of the timing of the course, I had to leave home on Sunday at lunchtime to be on-site for a 7am start the next morning, and then not get home until 7pm on Monday.  I completed the induction as required, but never needed to visit the site, so it seemed a waste of time and money to me.

In the seven years that I worked pre-children, I was promoted twice.  In the eight years post-children, promotion was never mentioned.  All of my “career progression” discussions started with my boss saying, “Well, I know you work part time . . .”

My husband started work with the company a few months before I did.  He had a Bachelors degree and three years of experience working in the field; I had no field experience but an honours degree and a PhD.  His starting salary was slightly more than mine, and my salary never caught up to his.  In all the years he’s worked for the company, he’s always received an “above expectations” rating in his performance reviews, even in years when he’d received a promotion (he’s had five of those in time he’s worked for the company).  I worked for the same company for sixteen years, and I received only one “above expectations” rating – all my others were “meeting expectations”.  In one particular year, having gone above and beyond in my work, travelling extensively, getting excellent reviews from the third-party clients that I’d done work for, I pushed especially hard to be assessed as “above expectations”.  My boss (and his boss, when I took it further) told me that because I’d got a promotion that year, it wasn’t appropriate that I also got a higher performance grading.  When I pointed out that my husband had got a high performance review and a promotion in the same year, they told me their decision was final. 

My husband, it must be said, is an exceptional worker. He deserves those high performance ratings.  He deserves the bonuses and the pay rises that he gets.  It just always seemed that there was less need for him to push for things, whereas I always had to make my case far more thoroughly than he did, or deal with issues that simply never came up for him.

Things to do in 2021

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.  I don’t really see the point of them.  This year, however, inspired by an online person who I know in real life, I’ve decided to write myself a list of 21 things I’d like to accomplish in 2021.

1. Read 50 books this year.
2. Write someone a letter once a month.
3. Do at least 20 minutes of exercise each day.
4. Have an at-home date night with my husband every second Friday (no children allowed!).
5. Have dinner out with a friend at least six times this year (no children or husbands allowed!).
6. Have a night away for our 20^th wedding anniversary (COVID meant that didn’t happen last year).
7. Family movie night once a month.
8. Teach my girls to cook two meals each.
9. Alcohol-free January.
10. Complete a senior first aid course.
11. Write one personal and one work blog post per fortnight.
12. Plan and take a family holiday.
13. Get three paid writing jobs.
14. Write at least six chapters of the novel that’s been in my head for the last two years.
15. Take each of my kids out to do something fun (just me and that kid) once per month.
16. Talk to my mum at least once a week.
17. Start having Sunday brunch all together.
18. Wait thirty days before buying anything new to make sure I really need it.
19. Join a book club.
20. Volunteer in my son’s Prep class each week.
21. Start a story journal with each of my daughters.

So far, I’m doing pretty well with this.  Let’s see how I’m going by the middle of the year.

On the beginning of a new year . . .

So, roughly a year ago, I was musing about All The Things I'd done in the 2000s to date, and wondering about what 2020 would bring.  A global pandemic was not something that I anticipated, mind you.

2020 was a weird year.  There's no other way to describe it.  It showcased some of the worst things about humanity (physical confrontations over the last packet of toilet paper in the shop; people declaring their "freedoms" more important that following medical advice), but it also showed the best.  People delivering groceries for random strangers.  Drive-by birthday parties.  New ways to celebrate long-standing traditions, like lighting up the dawn on ANZAC Day. 

Last year also shone a light on the disconnect between science and the general population.  The ongoing changes and updates to scientific and medical advice were seen as a sign that scientists and medical professionals didn't know what they were doing.  For the record, those changes and updates were good evidence that science was working just as it should - when new information came to light, it led to changes in the advice.  

And who could have predicted that we'd have one vaccine ready to go by the end of the year, let alone multiple vaccines?  That is the result of an extraordinary effort all over the world by multiple groups of sciences and medical professionals.  It's an amazing feat that really should be celebrated.

Interesting, though, are my children's thoughts on 2020.  I sat down with them yesterday and asked the three of them the same few questions about the year.  I've been doing this for years and have an ongoing 'diary' for each of them that I update each year.  Yesterday, not one of them mentioned COVID.  There were no complaints about staying home or being isolated.  My eldest made lots of comments about how awesome it was to have guinea pigs and how much she loves them.  The middle kid's highlight and happiness was all around getting roller skates and learning to skate.  And my son told me how exciting it had been to go to Kindy, and how he can't wait to start school later this month.  

And it was like that all year.  Sure, they complained occasionally about the things that were cancelled (school, parties, sports, activities).  But mostly it was about the good.  They all talked about their friends.  Skyped with some for ages.  Told me how much fun it had been to walk around the horse park near our house and talk to the goats who are in the next paddock.  They talked about climbing trees together, drawing chalk pictures on the driveway, painting rocks to leave around the neighbourhood.  

Now, I understand that we were luckier than most.  Infection rates and illness here never got out-of-control.  We had no change to our income.  My husband could work from home easily and safely.  We live in a safe area with reliable services.  We had all the food that we needed, the ability to go outside and walk, things to do to entertain ourselves.  And my kids remember those parts.  They remember being together and having fun.  

So, that will be my take away from this rather unusual year - that it was all about being together at home with the people I love best. 

Happy New Year.

But they'll think I'm a girl!

 My son has long hair.  It’s beautiful hair – golden brown with a slight curl at the end.  His hair is thick and glorious and (when brushed properly) very, very smooth.  And it has grown past his shoulders.  His fringe is non-existent – the front of his hair hangs to just below chin level.

He’s always had a lot of hair.  His sisters were both essentially bald as babies – they both had their first haircut at almost three.  He had so much hair that he genuinely needed a haircut at nine months, but his temperament did not allow for that – he had his first haircut at one.  I’ve cut his hair myself a couple of times, using the clippers that I cut his dad’s hair with. 

When he was younger, he didn’t really have an opinion on his hair.  I kept it short, clipped to the number 3 setting on my clippers.  My husband has a zero (almost completely shaved), so I didn’t really think that the 3 was particularly short.  For the longest time, he was happy with that.  Then lockdown happened, and he didn’t want me to cut his hair.  And then he didn’t want to have a haircut at all.  And then he was immensely pleased with the beautiful, long hair that resulted.  He is less pleased about brushing said hair, mind you, but I have made that a condition of the long hair – to keep it, it must be brushed daily.

My other requirement is that it needs to be tied back off his face.  He’d wander around with it hanging in his eyes, but I don’t like that, plus he is forever running into stuff (or getting his hair into his mouth or his food) if it’s not tied back.  He likes his ears covered, so we have arrived at a compromise – the front “fringe” of his hair is pulled back into a small pony tail on the top of his head, the rest is left down.

Over the last few months, we have been discussing school and what we’ll do with his hair.  Although the school he’ll be going to has no official hair policy, I have an official I-despise-nits policy, so long hair will be tied back in a proper pony tail to limit the chances of him bringing those nasty little suckers home (as a sidebar, I made it through my entire childhood without ever having nits.  The first year that both my daughters picked them up, I managed to acquire them from the same girl-child TWICE.  I have almost waist-length hair.  It’s fine, but there is lots and lots of it.  Getting a nit comb through my hair is an absolute epic drama.  Nits suck).  We have talked about having all his hair tied back in a pony tail at school.  He seemed cool with it.

So, cut to his Prep step-up day.  This is the day where he goes to school, meets his teacher, sees his classroom, gets to meet a few of his classmates.  He was super excited.  In school uniform by 6am.  Kept asking if we could leave now (our step-up time was 10am).  About 20 minutes before we were going to leave, I told him I wanted to put his hair in a pony tail.  He lost his mind about it, insisted that everyone would think he was a girl with a pony tail.  Cried and cried and begged to have his hair down.  In the end I said that the front had to be tied back.  He requested a jaunty pony tail on top of his head, with the rest of his hair brushed down.

We got to school and were talking to another family, a mum and her daughter who’d arrived at the same time as us.  The teacher arrived and announced, “Oh, we’ve got two girls here first!” My son, who had spent ages telling me a pony tail would make them think he was a girl and how he didn’t like that, just grinned at her and did not care at all.  I said he was a boy.  We moved on.

Compounding the long-hair-means-girl issue is the fact that my son has a gender-neutral name.  It’s not even one of those names with different male/female spelling (like Peter/Peta), so it can be a little confusing for others sometimes.  Entertainingly, my eldest daughter (who has relatively short hair and has been mistaken for a boy on many occasions) also has a gender-neutral name. Unlike her brother, her name has male and female spelling, so when it’s written down, it’s clear she’s a girl.  My middle kid has a very definitely female name.  I don’t believe there is even a male equivalent to her name (like Julian/Juliette or Andrew/Andrea).  There is not even a nickname possible that could even hint at being male.  And she has waist-length blonde hair, loves a dress and sparkles and favours hair clips and bands (the more the merrier).

As an aside, two days after his Step-Up day, it was ridiculously hot and humid here.  I told my son I was tying his hair in a ponytail to keep his hair off his back and neck and maybe let him cool down somewhat.  He moaned and whined all the way through the hair-tying process.  Once I’d managed to get it all tied back (it took four times longer than necessary because of the whining), he looked at himself in the mirror and announced rather smugly, “You know, I do look pretty cool.” And ran around with a ponytail for the next three hours, happy as a bird.

On Healthcare

 My parents have always had private health insurance.  Always.  When I was younger, if you were a full-time student, you were covered under your parents’ private health insurance until you were 25.  I was still a full-time student at 25, so I was covered by their plan until then.  The day of my 25^th birthday, my then-fiancé/now-husband transferred his single-person private health to a couple one, and I joined his.  I’ve never not had private health insurance.  Not even for a day.

Our private health insurance currently costs our family of five $560 a month.  My husband’s company pays just over half of this as part of his salary package, so our cost for our insurance is about $250 a month.  It’s pretty good insurance, covering most things.  The only exceptions to our insurance level is joint replacements and dialysis.  Neither of these are covered. 

Private health insurance in Australia also does not cover the cost of a visit to your doctor (general practitioner or specialist) or the cost of any medications.  Medical visits are covered by Medicare, which is available to all Australian citizens and residents, and the cost of some medications is subsidised or reduced (also by the government), particularly for those on lower incomes.  Medicare may not cover the full cost of your doctor’s bill, but clinics will advertise if they are “bulk bill” (they only charge the standard Medicare fee per visit) or if they are not.  My local doctor, for example, charges approximately double the standard Medicare fee.  You pay the cost for the doctor’s visit, and then they process the Medicare rebate electronically.  The rebate money is in your bank account immediately.  The difference between these amounts is referred to as “the gap”.

Private health insurance does cover the cost of dental visits (regular check-ups and orthodontic work), glasses (although the actual eye-test is covered by Medicare), private hospital care and a variety of “complementary” therapies (think physiotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractor), although the type of therapy and cost covered depends on your plan.  Similar to Medicare, private health has a fixed cost for each service covered, and if you chose a place that charges more than that, you have to pay the difference.  Payment is made directly to the service provider – they will process your private health rebate electronically, and then you pay any difference owing.  Most health care funds will also give you a list of providers who charge the “standard” fee, so you can choose someone whose rates are fully covered.

I had three babies as a private patient.  My regular obstetrician’s appointments were subsidised by Medicare, with me paying the gap.  My obstetrician’s office provided a list of all costs upfront (including regular obstetrics visits, pregnancy ultrasounds, any extra blood tests), so I knew what I would need to pay, and what Medicare/private health would cover.  My private health cover has a $500 excess for obstetrics, which meant that I had to pay the private hospital $500 up front.  All other costs were charged directly to my health fund.  All of my children were born at the same hospital and I had a private room with each.  I stayed for six nights with the first, three nights with the second and four nights with the third.  Although four nights was the standard stay, they let me stay six with the first because she was in the Special Care nursery for the first four nights.  Both my obstetrician and her paediatrician wouldn’t discharge me without her.  For each of those three stays, I paid $500.  My health insurance paid the rest.

I’ve never had a disagreement with my health insurer over payment of a bill.  The closest it came to this was after my eldest daughter was born.  Because she was born not breathing, they did a number of tests (swabs and blood tests) to determine if she had an infection.  Over the course of the six days we were in hospital, they did about a dozen such tests.  The first two tests were done in the first minutes of her life.  She wasn’t actually registered as a patient at the hospital until after they’d intubated her and got her breathing (a course of action that I fully support), and these two first tests were therefore technically performed on an “out-patient”.  Consequently, they had a different code on them to the others, and the insurance didn’t cover these particular tests on an out-patient.  When I went in to get my rebates processed at my fund’s office, the woman helping me explained this.  I explained why she’d technically not been a patient at the time.  The woman gave me the details of what I’d need to get the tests recognised and covered (several forms signed by at least two of the doctors, information from the hospital), which sounded like a lot of effort to me.  I asked how much the rebate was worth.  She looked it up and told me $15.  I told her not to worry about it.

Let me please point out that I’d have gotten the same level of care if I’d been a patient in a public hospital, not in a private one.  The difference would have been in the room type (possibly a shared room) and in the length of stay (usually 24 – 48 hours for a regular birth, with a midwife coming to your home to check on you and the baby for a couple of days later).  I’d also have been allowed to stay longer in the public system with a baby in special care, just as I was in a private hospital.

To point to the strength of the Australian medical system, particularly in big cities – I’ve only ever had to call for an ambulance twice.  Both times were last year.  The first was for my son – he slipped and fell off the bed and hit his head.  The ambulance was there within ten minutes.  The paramedics did a full range of checks, even though he was very clearly all right by the time they arrived.  They offered to take us to the children’s hospital for observation and reminded me to call immediately if anything changed.  There was no charge at all for this.

The second ambulance was for me.  I had extreme dizziness, to the point where I couldn’t stand up.  Again, the ambulance was at my door within ten minutes.  The paramedics did all the standard checks, plus two separate ECGs in my living room.  They took me to a public hospital (they offered me a choice of three; I chose the closest) and I had to provide my Medicare details.  No one asked a thing about private health insurance.  I was in the waiting room for about three hours, during which time a nurse came round to do observations (blood pressure, temperature, etc) on everyone waiting there.  I saw a junior doctor (who did all the same things as the paramedics, plus another ECG and a pregnancy test).  The consultant (senior doctor) then came in and ran through all the same stuff (minus the ECG, although she did study the results of both the paramedics’ and the junior doctor’s ones).  By the time all this was done, I was feeling fine, and there was no obvious cause for my dizziness.  The consultant recommended I see my GP to have some bloodwork done. 

Total cost of my trip to hospital and all of that?  Zero.  The only thing I paid for was the taxi ride home.  I could have paid less (there is excellent public transport between the hospital and the suburb where I live), but given my prior dizziness, I figured a taxi was a better choice. 

We’re lucky to live in a place like we do, with accessible and affordable health care, with or without private health insurance.  Yes, we pay taxes to cover this privilege, but it’s something I’m perfectly willing to cover.  There are a lot of places in the world where health care isn’t as easy to get to or to afford.

Once Upon A Time . . . We moved to the other side of the world

A stroke of luck (or good timing) saw us offered an international secondment in our early thirties, and we decided that it might be a good idea to move halfway ‘round the world for a few years. 

My husband and I are both scientists; we met at university.  At the time, we both worked for the same company, and we relocated to a refinery and lab that the company owned in Canada.  I was offered a job that was similar to the work I’d been doing previously; my husband’s new role was as an engineer, not as a scientist.  We moved from the east coast of Australia to a town in the province of Quebec in Canada. 

And did I mention that we were both expected to carry out our new roles in French?

We’d both been learning French for a few years beforehand – our company was headquartered in Montreal, so a number of the English-speaking sections of the business offered French classes to employees.  We’d both started classes when they were offered to our group.  The classes were two hours long, once a week. If you’ve ever learned a language, you’ll understand that two hours a week is not really a lot.  Unless you’re a linguistic genius, two hours a week will not teach you to be fluent.  At best, after a year or so, you’ll be able to read basic signs and documents (like menus), book yourself into a hotel, order your dinner and tell a taxi driver where you’d like to go. 

So, we moved to Quebec.  My husband did a week of intensive French classes before we went; I did not.  When we arrived, we went straight into the language school at the local college – I had a three week course, my husband did four.  The language course that we did was the course that was done by government officials who were required to be bilingual, so they were fairly intensive.  Seven hours a day of one-on-one lessons with a teacher, living with a French speaking family during the course, two after-class activities per week with other students, visiting places of interest in the local area, speaking only French.  My husband and I elected to live with different families for the duration of our study, so that we didn’t speak English to each other.  Everyone around us (teachers, other students, home-stay families, our employers) thought this was either hilarious or crazy (or both), but by the end of the course, they all agreed that we’d done the right thing.

Even after our language course, we were both extremely basic French speakers.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  Our speaking was not the issue; the ability to understand a conversation was the bigger problem.  One-on-one, when the other person was speaking slowly, choosing their words well and NOT using slang, it wasn’t too bad.  In a meeting (or in a lunchroom full of people speaking in slang with their quite different regional accents), it was far more challenging.  Conversations on a telephone, absent of the non-verbal cues that you get through face-to-face interactions were horrid.

Three months into our three-year stay, my French was good enough to do my job, but it took an extra three months to feel confident on the telephone.  By the end of the first year, I could hold my own in any meeting, have high-level technical discussions with other scientists and write short technical documents in French.  It took my husband six months to reach the “good enough” stage, and the telephone took a little longer.  Interestingly, while my husband’s French was never anywhere near as good as mine, both grammatically or with regard to his ability to discuss technical detail, he easily developed the ability to understand his plant operators, speaking in their local accents, over a walkie-talkie with plant noise roaring in the background.  I remember listening to him argue his (technical) point with an old-school operator over a “Mike” (walkie-talkie/phone) one afternoon.  My French was far better than his, but I struggled to understand the operator over all the noise in the background.

Once we had the language under control, working in another country became far easier.  We both enjoyed the work that we did and the people that we worked with were interesting and (in general) accommodating while we were first settling in.  We travelled a lot in our free time, saw much of Quebec province and Canada in general, and managed to fit in several trips throughout the USA.  

Unlike others we knew who’d been on secondment, we had two very distinct advantages – firstly, we were both employed as part of the secondment, which meant that while we were working, we were both out and about, practicing the language, meeting new people and setting up our social networks.  One of us never relied on the other for our social connections, to organise activities, to translate anything in the day-to-day.  The second was that we didn’t have kids at the time.  So many of our colleagues had done the whole secondment thing once they had kids, and aside from the fact that the primary parent usually stayed at home and didn’t get a chance to have the same work interactions, there was also the negotiation of schooling (which was not a trivial thing in French-speaking Quebec) and your kids’ friends and all the rest, all in a language that you and the kids may not speak.

Our time in Quebec was our last great adventure in our lives before children and it serves as a very real marker of the point between “couple” and “family”.  It was an amazing experience to have had, even with all of the challenges it posed.