Returning to my woggy roots

Returning to My Woggy Roots
(c) Melina Magdalena (2011)

In the meantime, we had to replace our trusty gardening fork and spade. Both of the old ones were about 20 years old and their handles broke off in the same week. It was such a pleasure to be given a $100 budget and go replace them. I took the baby and he rode on the trolley through the hardware store.

It's more than a year since I wrote the post Gardening Outside the Fence. The guerilla garden in the vacant lot over the road didn't work out. The blocks are still up for sale, and people walk across it regularly. Someone dumped a truckload of what I hope was clean fill on the block a couple of months ago. The kids have had a great time compacting it, and climbing up and over.

Outside our fence this year is an enormous crop of broadbeans. There's some dill and one silverbeet plant struggling in amongst them. I've widened the strip to include the area outside our front yard too, and the soil there hasn't had a chance to be built up and enriched. So many poppies volunteered themselves in the front flower patch, that I spread some in amongst the broadbeans, too. We've enjoyed eating them, but I'm not sure many of our neighbours have! I've put in some more sunflower seeds in between the ageing bean plants, hoping that the new plants will be sheltered as they sprout. 

Around the corner from us is a mulberry tree growing happily on someone's nature strip. It is a marvel - still young, but green and prolific with fruit. I'm not sure the people whose house it is growing outside of, want to share! We planted a mulberry in our backyard early last winter. It lost all its leaves and looked like a stick in the ground. Then suddenly it sprouted large leaves again, AND fruit.

It's amazing to look back at what was here when we moved in, and the changes that we've made in the last three years. These are changes inside the fence - not just outside. The backyard vege patch has been remade completely, and the seed I sowed there a few weeks ago has sprouted enough for me to be able to differentiate the plants (mostly). In fact this morning the baby and I thinned the radishes. My Grandma had a theory about nutrition that said - if a child puts strange things in its mouth, it is probably lacking nutrients, and so you should feed it radishes. Well, I tested that theory this morning. It's too early to tell!

I've had my eye on a patch of the nature strip outside our house for a while now. The nature strip, also known as the 'verge', is the land between the footpath and the kerb outside a residence. We had requested some time ago, that the local Council cease spraying our nature strip, after the herbicide blew into our yard and killed some of our flowers. So now it is our responsibility to keep our nature strip under control - sans herbicide.

The weeds are quite diverse, but there is a great deal of grass in the nature strip, as well as clover and other plants with prickles. We had a terrible time last spring with Caltrop, and I'm concerned that my activities outside our fence do not lead to another outbreak of this horrible plant.

I may be addicted to digging. For advocates of the no-dig garden, this may seem a little odd, but I find it immensely satisfying to work at soil and transform it into something that I can use. The soil around here is great!

A few weeks ago I used our new spade to break up the patch of nature strip into small sections. I didn't get back to it until today, but that is a good thing, as we got so much rain last week that the soil has softened. I managed to dig up about one-fifth of the area this morning, and during that time I had some interactions with 3 neighbours. I didn't reveal my plan, however. When asked - why are you doing that? I replied - so that I can grow something in here other than weeds!

Actually, I plan to put a fig tree in the centre of this patch. I hope the council will allow it to grow. If I prune it cleverly, I think it won't be obstructive to traffic, and we just don't have room for a fig in our yard! The fig tree will of course, be very small for quite a while. So I've planted out some seed trays of zinnias and portulaca. And I've reserved some sunflower seeds as well.

It's the first day of my two week school holiday break, and I'm loving it.  




 

the gynaecologist

 The gynaecologist
© Melina Magdalena (2011)


I was of no use to her.
She could not make me pregnant.

Your pituitary gland
She explained
Is working hard to stimulate the ovaries
But every woman is born
With a finite number of eggs

So that’s it
I said
Stunned
And
She shrugged

I remember
She used the word
Unfortunately

She’d fluffed around for 15 minutes
Before showing us in
We’d sat waiting
The baby was fussy

By the time we got settled
In her consulting room
Faces turned
Expectantly
Awaiting her plan of action
For making our miracle
He was on the boob

What had she been thinking?
I can’t possibly charge those women $120
Just for giving the results of a blood test
But she did

I tried to make small talk
What can I expect from
Menopause?
She wasn’t interested
In giving me advice
On that

I changed the subject.
Instead
We discussed the décor.

Ashamed
Of my condition
I couldn’t face the receptionist
So I let my partner pay

I took the baby
out to the car

Averted my gaze
All the way home
Drummed on the steering wheel

Impatient
For my pillow
That would capture
My lost dream
sorrow

My Cuckoo's Nest

My Cuckoo’s Nest

© Melina Magdalena (2011)

It isn’t fate, so I am told. This is a world of my own making. I created my circumstances, made my choices and have therefore no reason to rail against them. Instead, let me accept the situation in good faith, realising how much better off I am, than others in this world who, I must assume, equally chose their fates and have therefore no logical reason to deplore their circumstances which are, I admit, so much worse than mine.

The cuckoo famously lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, which raise the young, while the biological young of the cuckoo-raisers are evicted from their parent’s nests to splatter splatter on the ground and die.

This is not quite the scenario I am painting. My own young, raised successfully to adulthood, have just about flown the coop already.

The cuckoo is also a symbol of someone who is foolish, perplexing and confounding. How can one understand a person who refuses to raise his or her own young, and deposits them in some other nest for some other person to love and care for? Is it craziness? Is it callousness? Is it rampant individualisation, free market policy, and economic rationalism at its best?

In order to be happier, we are told to stop seeking after our own fortunes, and allow ourselves to be like those birds, who do not wonder, when night falls, where they will find their sustenance on the morrow. Perhaps the problem was that the plan was too well thought-out, leaving too few variables to chance? That other truism – we get what we need, is always followed implicitly by – we don’t get what we want. I didn’t want my role in this family to just be, just be the breadwinner.

The English word ‘cuckold’ is derived from both of these words – the bird, and the deluded person. The cuckold is conventionally the generous though gullible man who raises the children borne by his spouse; children fathered by someone else. (I discovered the more contemporary usage of the word, which seeks to reclaim the power of the man and reinstate his dominant position over “his” woman, but this piece is neither about sexual objectification, nor gratification.)
So to the Cuckoo’s Nest of My Own Making – I’m unsure what part I play in this. Am I the fly-by-night twofold shouting bird, butting in and putting my eggs where someone else can incubate them? No. Am I the bird who made the nest the cuckoo put its egg into? No eggs! No eggs! Am I the bird who raises the chicks that were laid in the nest I made? Apparently not. Who’s the cuckoo then?

This has been brought on, of course, by the onset of menopause, tragically early in my case, following after the early menopause of my mother and my grandmother. Mine started just as I started finally trying to fall pregnant with the child I had hoped to raise with my partner. I’m the infertile cuckoo – and menopausal women are known to be a bit crazy and out-of-control, at least some of the time.

Best laid plans make best farm eggs and all that – but my ovaries have ceased to make follicles. My fertility has run its course. So my/our plans were laid to an untimely rest.

As well as the grief associated with the shock of diagnosis, the death of my happy dream and my rage at finding that I did wait too long, too long, but for all the right reasons, it’s thrown up in my face questions about family, roles and lifestyle choices that zap me out of my comfort zone and into emotional chaos.

As my Beloved says – most breeding couples need never question the assumptions around roles, allegiance and ownership that pervade every family structure. Our lives as a pair of breeding lesbians are far more complex than many might imagine.

Once it was as simple as – each has a womb, each bears a child, we raise them as siblings, of whom we each are the mothers.

Once it was as simple as – the biological mother will breastfeed, the other will support her through the birthing process and beyond. And then we will swap roles and give the other mother her turn.

Once it was as simple as – the birthing mother stays home with the baby and the other is the breadwinner.

This all seems a mockery, a mockery now.

My long-held happy dream proved itself flexible enough to adapt to a changing set of parameters that moved from defiantly single motherhood, to partnered; from stable public housing, to private mortgage stress; from welfare dependence, to work. My happy dream shattered into pieces that can’t be reassembled. I cannot recognise my place within this cuckoo’s nest of my own making.

Once upon a time my happy dream made economic sense, based on the resources I had at hand – my own resources to generate income, and the resources I knew I could count on, as a citizen of this state. By gaining a partner I lost access to welfare. The road is much tougher on us all, these days.

Once upon a time my happy dream afforded me a lifestyle though poor in monetary terms that would be rich in opportunity. My plans were dignified by my creative inspirations. I would be time rich, if resource poor, which suited my simple living intentions. However, I find myself robbed of time, robbed of time, and struggling to generate any creative ideas in the midst of full-time teaching.

Once upon a time my happy dream was joyously intertwined with my/our involvement and enactment of my cultural heritage and its traditions; I so wanted to bring my children into a home replete with Jewish symbolism and ideas, so they could grow into a Jewish identity that was celebratory, life-affirming, and not divisive. Due to the different faiths that we follow, the identity of our children is cut cleanly in half; two-faced and discursive.

As these elements shuffled off, my happy dream was cut down to the exact size and the exact shape of the cuckoo’s nest I now inhabit. I’m finding it harder and harder to reconcile, let alone to be happy with this situation. I keep saying – I need to find another narrative; this one is no longer viable. It’s hard to keep breathing in an environment that contains only imaginary oxygen. My faith in world creation wears thin, wears thin indeed.

My children – thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for never seen – it’s not true! The one that we created together is no less mine, than hers. This won’t change just because I am unable to bear a sibling.

My understanding of feminism, and my desire to live out some of those feminist ideals to which I relate, wars with those other desires and assumptions that help to make sense of who I am, as a person. I lay claim to all those warts, scars, wrinkles and scabs that lie both on the surface of my skin and deep within.

But then again – who am I, am I? The cuckoo, cuckoo, or the cuckolded? Neither of the two? Is it necessary or helpful to weave my new narrative within this dichotomy? Perhaps not. It may be just my rage, my rage and my endless disappointment that renders this vision with such bitterness.

I so wanted to be the birthing mother, the one whose belly swelled, who felt the baby swimming safely inside her, who brought that new life forth and nursed it. I so wanted to be the homemaker, the home mother, the primary carer, the breastfeeder.

I so wanted my turn to come soon, come soon, and now it will never come at all. I don’t know who I want to be now. I don’t know who I can be now. I don’t want just to settle for the crumbs that are dropped. It’s not fair not fair not fair not fair.

Her children are my children are our children. But what kind of mother will I get to be? There are no glib responses. I’ve hit the rock bottom of this nest. And that’s so hard, so hard.

(*with thanks to William Wordsworth, 1804 To the cuckoo)

Mitzrayim in Kilburn

Mitzrayim in Kilburn

(c) Melina Magdalena 2011

Ugliness is what I found outside our door this afternoon.

There is a large vacant block opposite our house. When we moved in, there were 4 houses on this block. The houses are long gone, it has now been subdivided again, and the blocks are up for sale. In the meantime, water mains have been dug into each block, which meant digging up the street and the footpath. The parts of the cement footpath were cemented over, and the soft, wet cement had been carved into. Not just the usual stuff - names or so-and-so loves so-and-s0, or even so-and-so is a homo, which would have been bad enough.

Dayenu

No, I took the baby across to see. He was excited by the red and white striped safety banners that had been erected around each soft part of the footpath. The wind was flapping them and I was hard-pressed keeping him off the street, chasing after the ends. But something caught my eye. I picked him up and went to see.

My heart sank deeper than the pollution that lines the shallows of our shared waters of life.

So we went back home and got the chalks and I went to work. People were driving home and gawking at my big behind as I was on my hands and knees, passionately chalking out alternative messages. Well, I felt self conscious.

But undeterred.

My beloved took matters into her hands, picked up the phone and called the police. Such viliifying racist vandalism is surely against the law. The police referred her to the Local Council. It was after hours.

She too, was undeterred.

"Well then, I understand what you're saying," I heard her say calmly, "so in that case, may I please speak with your supervisor? You know what Kilburn is like. There are African kids walking up and down that street all the time. There are so many Afghani families living around here. This is not acceptable. It needs to be erased tonight. It can't wait until next week."

An hour later we were eating dinner. We heard a vehicle pull up. Clutching my bowl of risotto, I ran out the front gate and found a Council man with a tool, scratching out the hateful messages. My beloved brought up the rear, carrying the baby.

"Thank you so much for coming out to do this tonight," we told him. "Have a great weekend."

"It's just kids," he said.

"It's not just kids," I retorted. "It's nastiness."

"Yes," he agreed. "It is nasty."

And it is. Kids learn their attitudes from their elders. And it's no excuse. This is our neighbourhood, too. We are the strangers in the midst of a cultural sand storm. We are the weirdos in the village. It's our child who will grow up to inherit the world that we have helped to produce and sustain. It wasn't just for the sake of the African families, the Iraqi families, the Burmese and Afghani and Indian families that I did what I did. It was also for my sake and for my own family.

homophobia amongst AFL supporters

Homophobia amongst AFL supporters (c) Melina Magdalena (2011) Dear Mr Clough and others, I turned on Radio National yesterday in the middle of your documentary "Cheers", about AFL supporters. I listened for a few minutes, but felt disgusted and upset and had to turn it off shortly thereafter. Therefore my comments must be taken in light of the fact that I did not have the whole context of the program. What I heard that upset me, was comments from a supporter about abusing the cheer squads of other teams, and about abusing the players of his own supported team. Not only did he comment about his own behaviour (implying that this behaviour is shared by all AFL fans no matter which team they support), but there was also some recorded sound from his actual "cheering" and "jeering" during a football match. I heard him say something to the effect of "I like you too, mate - you can fuck my sister", which was bad enough, but prior to this, he talked proudly and boldly about calling players paedophiles and poofters in the same breath, as though all "poofters" are automatically "paedophiles" as well. As a queer person myself, I am sensitive to homophobic comments. This upset me in two ways. As long as I live in a culture where it is acceptable to use homophobic comments to incite footballers to be stronger, more aggressive and hence more "masculine", the level of homophobia is intolerable and unacceptable. Secondly, the fact that this homophobia is expressed so "naturally" does not mean that it should not be countered openly. The fact that his homophobia is simply part of a wider cultural context and was not concentrated within a narrow window of countering homophobia specifically does not make it any less hurtful and dangerous. I don't know whether the homophobia was commented upon, because I can't find a written transcript of the documentary, and I refuse to listen to the whole thing. If it wasn't, I would ask you to please consider making a comment about it in your next program, and explaining that it is not the ABC's position to support such hatred, nor to condone or incite hatred against minority groups in Australia. Many thanks for your attention, With kind regards, Melina Magdalena

The Trouble with South Kids

The Trouble with South Kids
(c) Melina Magdalena (2011)

Last night was a bad one. Our 10 month old son was restless, fretful, and would not settle, even in our bed. The three of us got very little sleep. In one of those fleeting moments of falling asleep only to be dragged back into wakefulness, I had a nightmare. I was buried up to my neck, about to be stoned. My son, now about 11, was being encouraged to gather the sharpest stones that he could find. He weighed the stones in his hand with an air of bravado, but terror and doubt were scrawled across his face. My crime? I had formed an alliance with another woman. We had raised our children as a woman-headed family.

Homosexuals in other countries suffer such treatment regularly. They are beaten, stoned, tortured, raped, hanged, poisoned, lynched, burned, strangled, stabbed and killed in the multitude of ways that humans have perfected over the millennia. People do this to homosexuals without their victims having harmed another person. They do not need to justify themselves. Simply to be different is enough to be denied life. Religion provides some solace to the killers, by naming homosexuals as unnatural, demonic and evil.

The trouble with South Kids is not that the editorial team is homophobic. It wouldn’t surprise me if the editors had queer friends and even family members. This is not unusual in contemporary Australian society. Certainly it would explain the Ms Smart’s catty responses to letters of complaint about her compliance and implicit support for the homophobic religious views expressed by some readers, and her denial that the publication could do anything better than it already does.

Naturally, we don’t expect a person in a professional capacity to offer her personal opinions on personal matters, but Ms Smart’s decision to publish the hate-filled and homophobic opinions of others in her magazine needs to be explained somehow. SouthKids does not profess to be only for heterosexuals. Wouldn’t that be as illegal as stating it were only for married couples, for conservative Christians, for white families, or for Australians who speak English?

I would venture to guess that the reason Ms Smart did not come out and claim to have queer friends, is her fear that the published homophobic religious block that spouted such hatred of homosexuals would come out in force against her, for associating with us in any way. On the other hand, it’s possible that her personal views correspond with hatred of homosexuals, but she may be reluctant to make that stand for fear of alienating the more reasonable sector of the readership. It’s a fine line of deceit in the name of making an honest living, but who can blame her for that?

SouthKids needs to be viewed in light of its purpose and goals. It is a for-profit publication, aimed squarely at aspirational white, Australian middle-class families who are living in Adelaide. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Ms Smart seems to have landed a prize niche career, which I imagine she performs largely at the same time as home-making for her darlings. She is to be congratulated and envied for finding a job that utilises her skills and enables her to have the best of both worlds – public and private.

The publication makes no secret of its purpose. Why should it? It is chock-full of images of white children. Most of the photographs that depict adults, privilege the heterosexual couple with two (or daringly, extravagantly – three) white children. The magazine is funded through advertising by businesses that cater to white, middle-to-upper-class English-speaking consumers. If you leaf through a couple of issues, you will probably discover in amongst the multitude of clean, well-groomed, bright, white children, one – or at the most – two brown kids. One is probably Indian, and the other indeterminate. There may be another Asian child. There may be a child with southern European olive-skin and dark eyes. These children will probably not feature in the illustrations of the articles. They most often feature in amongst a group of children in an advertisement.

South Kids contains no philanthropic advertising except for its partner, Community Lifestyles Incorporated. There is no promotion of sponsoring poor children overseas. The publication is cozy and insular. It is a feel-good publication which aims to make mainstream South Australian parents feel that they have every right to expect the best for and from, their children. Help is available for the little problems that crop up along the way. This is the luckiest of countries.

The trouble with South Kids is its brash banner – the best magazine for SA parents. This is inaccurate and misleading. Many homosexuals in South Australia are also parents. Is this publication not also for us?

The articles are well-written, the publication and website are glossy and attractive, and it is well-marketed. However, South Kids makes no attempt whatsoever to be inclusive of any kind of the diversity we have come to accept as Australian, and that we expect to view in Australian media.

It is these aspects of the publication that rub salt in the wounds of its detractors, because we want to belong! We are led to believe that this is a publication that represents, supports and serves us, our families and our children. Our misplaced aspirations jar painfully against the misleading claims made by South Kids that it is for us.

The token articles which appear in some issues about token situations and token families, whether they be queer or refugee, only serve to highlight the differences between these families and normal South Australian families. There is no attempt to sugarcoat the situations of these families, and the message is crystal clear – the members of these families are grateful to be included, pleased to be Australian, and trying their best, despite the impossibility of the task, (given their obvious genetic, linguistic and socio-economic failings), to fit in to normal society. Tolerate us, despite our differences, is the premise of these articles. Please be nice to us!

No one likes to be marginalised. It’s ironic that the majority of lesbian breeders grew up in white Australian middle-class families. We inherited the sense of entitlement that goes along with this territory. We understand very well that to be marginalised means to miss out. We’ve been witness to this far too many times, and it is intolerable – unkind. Those who are marginalised get a whole lot less cake than the rest. How is that fair? We get the crumbs, and once in a while, we might get some kind of hand out to keep us salivating for more.

The tantalising promise that we will belong someday, that we aren’t evil degraded terrible witches, and that we might even get legal equality sometime, is hard to release, because in its place, hard reality tells us we are but a few thousand kilometres away from being buried up to our necks and stoned to death for our apparent sins.

to the reclaim the night collective

to the reclaim the night collective
February 12 2011

Comment received anonymously on my previous post:

The Reclaim the Night poster is not yours - it is the property of the collective. You agreed to design it but that doesn't give you ownership or indeed the right to sell it on. For someone who claims that women's rights is one of her interests, this completely undermines the feminist collective. I would appreciate it if you stop selling the posters for your own personal profit and direct the funds to the reclaim the night collective

What can I say?
1. I designed the poster out of my own experience. I painted the original banner with my own materials. This was prior to my offering it to the collective of that year for use that year to promote the event that year.

2. I paid to have the banner professionally photographed.

3. I paid to have the posters printed.

Who are you? And who is the reclaim the night collective? And how long have you been participating on this collective? And is this collective active?

From my recollection the Adelaide Reclaim the Night fell by the wayside during the first half of this decade in favour of commemorating the 16 Days Against Violence Against Women. There was an attempt by bureaucratic paid public servants to maintain the apparatus but due in part to the reluctance to undertake work that was unpaid, and in part to the difficulty in organising alongside unpaid grassroots women it gradually withered away. If there has been a resurgence of interest in Reclaim the Night I welcome it.

It's not the first time I have been accused of undermining "the feminist collective" and I admit I have had no training in feminism. I don't know what this means. I don't know what I have done to undermine it. It feels confusing. It triggers my inner conviction that I am a fraud, that I am dishonest and stupid. Perhaps I am. Perhaps you would care to explain to me what you mean and how I could change my ways?

A little herstory -
I joined a reclaim the night organising collective in Adelaide and designed a poster for that year's event. Perhaps you recall it? It was landscape orientation, painted joyously in blues, purples and reds, showing shoes around the border, and advertising that year's Reclaim the Night march. I enjoyed being part of the organising collective and participating in a event that had become integral to my identity and that I had been faithfully attending for several years.

The following year I again participated in the organising collective. At that time most collective members were students at Flinders and Adelaide Universities. I was very excited by a banner that I had painted of a poster design I had entered in a competition many years earlier for Reclaim the Night. That original design was pencil and it was the wrong dimensions and it was not chosen as the winner of the competition that year.

I offered my newly painted revamped design for use to promote that year's Adelaide event. I did not offer it in perpetuity and it never crossed my mind that someone might have considered that I had.

[I do not claim that poster is representative of Reclaim the Night or that no one else could design a poster to better represent Reclaim the Night. I welcome the expression by others to represent the event and all that it stands for. I may be misguided in my feminism but I am not that arrogant.]

I was so scarred by my experience that year in that organising collective that I stopped attending Reclaim the Night events at all. I was lied to, unsupported, attacked and generally so abused by some of the women on the collective that I decided it wasn't really safe to participate anymore.

I had had the idea that the Reclaim the Night event might be revitalised if it had some publicity prior to the march, to remind Adelaide's women about the march. The collective agreed to support a poster launch, and then failed to support it in the event, to the extent that at the poster launch, there were no posters. It was a farce. Leaving aside my personal humiliation, the lack of support by the collective members for something we had collectively agreed to do, undermined our collective efforts to gain momentum and participation in the march that followed.

At that point I embarked upon finding another way to participate in changing the world and acting against violence against women; particularly sexual violence. The result of this was The Reclaiming Anthology, published a few years later. The book is organised around the poster design, with a section for each window of reclaiming as represented on the poster.

I later paid out with my own money to have my poster reprinted for the purposes of promoting the book and the poster together. No one has requested to use the poster to promote subsequent Reclaim the Night events. It has fallen into herstory. It has fallen into disuse. Why not onsell the pieces of pretty paper to other women around the country who might gain something from it?

The design is my personal creative property. It was not commissioned by the collective of that year or, indeed any collective. It is wrong for the collective to lay claim to it now, and it rankles that someone would do so anonymously with such an intrinsic lack of integrity.

By all means make contact with me if you value my poster and wish to use it. By all means acknowledge the work that I did. By all means treat me as a human being and respect the fact that I am at least attempting to live and deal openly in this world.