The Stories I Have In My Head (6 May, 2021)

A few years ago I wrote a piece called “Holding My House in My Head”. I never published this agonizer, but it has stuck with me because at the time of writing it, I spoke about it with a friend whose response surprised me at the time. I recall she said something like “I wouldn’t want to hold my house in my head; it sounds really terrible”. 

 At the time I was a Stay At Home Mother of two primary-school-aged children at the same time as being a Business Owner working 30+ hours/week from home caring for preschoolers for $10/hour each. If I had had four in care, that would have been $40/hour, but my hours stretched from 6am to 11pm and I almost never had more than two in care at a time. Oh, I was also a Wife, a Daughter, a Sister, with In-Laws, and a Friend. 

My friend’s response surprised me was because although I was under immense pressure, I was feeling very strong. I was feeling good about keeping all the balls in the air. I was feeling competent and adequate. 

I wrote:      My house – I know pretty much where everyone is and what they’re doing most of the time; Get to spend the day with some of the most funny, interesting human beings; I’m not scared. I do my work well. The children I care for are well looked after and educated

. . . . . . 

 I hold my house in my head. I am intimate with every spider web, streak of grime across the kickboard of the kitchen cupboards, dirty windows, from when Wizard threw mud on them that never got washed off, despite the hours and hours of playing firefighters and squirting water on said muddy windows. I know when the toilet paper is about to run out and it’s time to place an order with Who Gives a Crap. I keep track of light bulbs, refillable bottles of shampoo, the need for socks without holes to wear to school, and clean uniform items. 

The pressures exerted on me by the Family Day Care Scheme were massive and, in the end, insurmountable, especially combined with the pressures of family life and a partnership in which I felt my paid work was of far less value and not recognized as a contribution to our family. 

I wrote:      When I’ve been up since 5am working, and the last child leaves at 6pm and 

my wife has just got home from work and I need to feed my family, 

 when am I supposed to vacuum and mop, and scrub the cupboard doors? 

 When do I reflect on what I offer the children the next day? 

 When do I write up my reflections and my programming? 

 And why? So I can keep working for $10 an hour? 

Also:      The twinge of guilt and exasperation that pinches me at the words 

“There’s no bread?” at 7:25am on Wednesday morning 

 when Brown Owl needs to make her lunch and leave for work in the next 

five minutes because there are not enough leftovers from the night before, 

 is soon buried beneath the multiple other strands of need that 

I juggle and weave and manage so deftly all of the bloody time. 

(Except when I don’t. And there are so many times I make mistakes, times I am just unable to add one more complexity to the list of responsibilities, times when I cannot be in more than one place at one time, times when the guilt, resentment, envy and exhaustion turn me into a robotic martyr.) 

The story I carry in my head from such years is of me as an unloved drudge, invisible so long as I perform to standard, and unworthy of attention or affection. Each time one of my children hurts me or feels hurt, feels like it is a punishment I earned and deserve because of my imperfection. 

Each time I am deprived of something I’ve been longing for, miss out on an opportunity to give some time to myself, let go of another connection with someone feels like if I don’t further compress my being, the cracks will start to show and the whole thing might fall apart, and where will that leave my children, my partner, my business, my garden, my home, my animals? 

I was busy, yes – too busy to give anything much for myself, and too busy to gain any perspective on the aspects of my life that I had orchestrated and created, those I had taken on because there didn’t seem to be anyone else to fill the void, and those that were placed on my shoulders because I accepted them without question. 

I remember vividly, the dread I have carried in my heart for years, knowing it would be years before my children are no longer at home full-time and I can finally give voice to the yearning to create. The stories I created in my head at these dread-filled times were joyous, colourful, light-filled and wonderful. I couldn’t wait to express what was being compressed and repressed inside my being. 

These were not stories I could talk about freely with anyone in my life. These were not stories co-constructed with the viewpoints and experiences of anyone else. They were vicious open secrets; wounds that repeatedly tore jagged holes in the doggedly darned and meticulous weaving that represents my life. 

These stories are mediated by my inability and unwillingness, because of the shame I bear, to place responsibility on anyone else. At least this way, only I can be at fault. It wouldn’t be fair to blame somebody else. 

Of course, some people know me better than that. Some people do not remain oblivious to my pain. 

Some people say – you choose to see your life in such a negative light. Actually, your life is great! Just look at the good bits instead of focusing on the bad bits. 

Some people say – let me help you refocus your ideas about your life. There may be ways to change things so that you are not so overburdened. 

Some people attribute my behaviour to the circumstances I construct around myself. 

Some people tell me that I am making choices to write my story the way I am writing it. Some people said – hey Melina, this is not your fault; give yourself a break – let in some freedom chinks. It’s not all up to you. 

See, I am not an idiot. I have been trained in Deep and Active Listening. I have had therapy, worked on myself. I am not ignorant or incognizant of my tendencies to render myself so alone, so special and so Rock Rose Water Violet remote as to be unreachable.# 

I quote the out-of-favour J.K.Rowling: 

”Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? 

Or has this been happening inside my head?” 

. . . . . 

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, 

but why on earth should that mean that it is not real? * 

My life is not a fiction. I do not dwell between the pages of a novel. When I summoned the courage to speak my truth in the hope that such a radical gesture might initiate a cataclysmic change in the paradigm of my life, and my truth was relegated to “stories inside my head”, the shock and shame of this judgment silenced me instantaneously. The somatic effect was shakiness, queasiness, shortness of breath. And I wanted to die. Of course. Or at least disappear, permanently. 

Perhaps I was foolish to harbour the hope that the truth of my lived experience holds any value if not for myself, than for those I share my life with? Trouble was, I naively mistook my opponent for my ally. I understand that, now. 

#Bach Flower Therapy: Theory and Practice, Mechtild Scheffer (1988) 

 *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K.Rowling (2007)

empathic (9/4/21)

Last night I lay awake considering that:

A child who lets off steam (melts down, behaves badly, tantrums, is violent and aggressive, moody, destructive, speaks rudely to parents, mistreats family members) at home, but keeps it together in public (at school, when at relative’s homes, at the park, in the shops, visiting favourite places) is very much like the perpetrator of domestic and family violence (stereotypically the male partner) who is seen as a good guy (great father, doting husband, community-minded, spiritually aware) at work and in public, but wreaks havoc, murder and mayhem on his family members at home (stereotypically the wife and children, also pets), through threatening, coercive, cold, gaslighting, violent, confusing behaviour. 

To me, the most disturbing part of this idea is that I was taught that my children see me as a safe person. I should treasure and respect the fact that they trust me enough to show their true feelings. 

Hang on, that’s not right, is it? 

If I am treasured and respected with my child’s deepest vulnerabilities, then should I therefore allow myself to be continually thrust under the doormat to be stomped on? What is it, about being the parent, that relegates me to bearing the brunt of the child’s pent-up frustrations and hostilities, rather than the authority figure who (in a calm and measured way), teaches the children appropriate non-violent ways to express their needs to be seen and heard and respected?

If my child places me at a different part of the hierarchy than the other adults in their life 

(teachers, principals, grandparents, Sunday School teachers, checkout operators, doctors, dentists, bus drivers), 

then where does that put me in the patriarchal scheme of things? 

Having been placed there, as the punching bag of my child, am I bound and determined to remain there for the rest of my life? 

Where is their other primary parent placed in the scheme of things? 

In the minds of my child are we aligned, allied, alongside one another, or do we stand on different rungs of a (mostly indifferent) ladder? 

If my child fails to respect me now, how will they ever respect me as an adult? 

If my child doesn’t respect me now, why should I respect them? 

Is my child worthy of respect? 

I cannot be that entitled authority figure who demands that my children obey me, especially when uninterrogated obedience demands abasement. 

If I model my response to their letting off steam by behaving with kindness, firmness and understanding, it’s not the same as condoning their behaviour, as long as I also do the work of teaching them better, more appropriate, less destructive and violent ways to vent. It’s not an instant fix, but part of growing up and learning how to be in a social world. 

Punishment is not a useful part of this. In my life, punishments work to make things harder for me, and to make life more miserable for the children. Punishment means I have to be on call to monitor and police the children’s activities, as well as mustering up my creative side to cajole them into accepting the new situation and trying to do something they do not want to do. 

Punishment renders the child’s behaviour and identity suspect, without ever examining what drives the child to do what they do. When punishments are imposed and I am called to enforce them, I become severed, separated from my child, causing anger, retribution and grudges. I am set up against my child, aligned with an authoritarian approach, which is bewildering to my child. 

I’ve also been taught is that behaviour is communication. Specifically for children who haven’t learned to talk well, viewing behaviour as communication enables the adult in the relationship to decode the messages the child is desperately attempting to convey, through what looks at first glance like fairly objectionable, possibly dangerous, usually destructive behaviour, how they are feeling and thinking about their place in the world. 

It’s worth considering the role of behaviour in communication between adults, as well. What does my behaviour communicate to my child, to my partner? 

I am considering the concept of empathy. I suspect that only a child who is respected and loved can develop the kind of empathy that extends beyond that child’s own needs to be cherished. The projection by authority figures, of non-empathy, masks that child’s deep need to be recognized. The child’s behaviour may be labelled as cruel, irrational and violent, when actually, the child is crying out for love. Isn’t the child who is hardest to love, that most needs it? 

A child who is repeatedly taught to suppress, repress and oppress their own needs and emotions, becomes numb to the needs and emotions of others. That child’s need to be recognized, heard, seen and valued can exert such tremendous internal pressure that either implosion or explosion results. That child’s focus becomes so narrow, that to admit any feeling at all, they need to resort to harming themselves. 

As a mother, and as a wife, I habitually muddle up and over-identify with those who test me. When I fall into trying to understand what drives my child’s behaviour, or my partner’s behaviour, I lose sense of myself, my integrity, my rights and most importantly my role as adult and educator. 

I need other adults in my life to help set me upright, to name and validate my deep empathy, to remind me of how vital it is that I not numb out, withdraw, disengage, but rather that I roll up my sleeves and set to work with patience and love, to help my child learn appropriate and acceptable ways of expressing themselves without annihilating me. 

I must set limits and boundaries as to what I am prepared to accept. 

I must let the children know when they have pushed too far. 

I must find ways for them to make amends. I must allow them to practice exercising their powers with grace and acknowledge their attempts and achievements. 

I must be present, to model love, acceptance, patience, kindness, respect and wisdom, if I am to survive.  

When no effective limits and boundaries are set, danger walks through the door. A child who knows no limits will push their behaviour beyond the acceptable and understandable, to violent and self-destructive. 

Love is the baseline, but to my mind, the children will always come first. 

I run these questions constantly through my mind: 

What is my child’s behaviour communicating? 

What does my child need? 

Am I be enough for my child? 

Can I seek help with this without betraying my primary relationship? 

How can I simultaneously enforce my will and my need to be heard, seen, resected, valued, and yet respond with grace, to the often outrageous and troubling behaviour of my troubled child? 

It is more than wanting my child to be happy. I don’t want my child to grow up to be an angry, violent human.

Sanctioned by the Silence (23/02/2021)

Trigger warning – this is a discussion of rape culture. 

I’m going to use the term “victim-survivor” in this piece, rather than “survivor” or even “thriver”. 

One of the most moving and healing experiences I have had was to sit in a room with counsellors and other victim-survivors of rape. The first time I did this was part of a group therapy process in a group comprised of women with no obvious link other than having survived sexual assault. The second time was different, and more potent. It came at the end of the legal process when serial rapist Brett Major was convicted and sentenced and jailed. I sat in a group of other victim-survivors of his crimes. 

Part of the legal process had been to parade us one by one in front of a police line-up at Holden Hill Police Station. I’ve written of this experience before. Unlike the depiction of such events in television crime dramas there was no physical barrier between each of us and our rapist. We were accompanied by exclusively male police officers, which still seems extraordinarily premeditated and insensitive. The third point to make is that we were each instructed not to speak of our experiences of rape to one another (lest our conversation somehow sully the legal process). 

Our enforced silence shaped the way we were able to behave. It was obvious that we were in a boy’s club and that the determination of guilt or innocence was only going to be made tangentially according to our individual responses to the process. The possibility that we might, despite the apparent invasion of our fragile privacy, be able to identify the man who had attacked us was offered grudgingly to us. We were being accorded some kind of privilege to get this opportunity at all. 

It’s not unusual for victim-survivors of rape and sexual assault to report feeling violated repeatedly by enduring police and judicial processes. Indeed the idea that we might feel uncomfortable, and that our privacy might be invaded is used to keep us silent. 

"What I really want to encourage people to remember is that even though this issue is a heavy topic, and therefore it's very difficult to talk about, it's never going to be as difficult as the abuse itself." Grace Tame 

Major’s confession played an enormous mitigating role in his sentencing, which was light even by the pathetic standards of Law. 12 years for 12 crimes. His confession was hunted out of him by his interactions with women. I’m not the only one to figure out that a confession would never have been forthcoming, had women’s voices, raised repeatedly despite the sanctioned silence not been heeded. 

When it came to us sitting in a room together with the right and freedom to speak, we all had a great deal to say. Not all of Brett Major’s targets were in the room – some had declined the opportunity and others had never been found to be invited. I didn’t recognize any of my fellow victim-survivors from encountering them at Holden Hill Police Station. 

I wonder whether we would have had anything to say to Brett Major, given the opportunity? 

I wonder about invading the precious privacy of the “male staffer” who has allegedly assaulted several women who were working at Parliament House? 

When rape culture and the boy’s club works so hard to silence and isolate victim-survivors by pretending to protect our privacy and our fragile state, it is our collective strength that inspires fear into men. We want to turn the world upside down, shake it up and put the pieces back together in a way that will be better for all of us. It doesn’t mean we want to shake up the world and victimize men in return for being victimized by men and rape culture. 

I know that the strident assertions that Linda Reynolds CSC is a wrongdoer and needs to be punished for maintaining the boy’s club provides convenient distraction from the central issue. Linda Reynolds is not THE rapist. 

Who’s to say she doesn’t feel just as threatened as the “young staffers”, by the “male staffer rapist”? 

Who’s to say she doesn’t feel that her position as a minority woman in Parliament is just as threatened by being forced to either confront rape culture, thereby stepping away from any protection she has as a grudgingly accepted politician, or to sanction rape culture through her continued silence? 

Women need to support other women to tackle rape culture. Speaking up unsupported leads to ridicule and abuse. It takes guts to take on rape culture. Women who are victim-survivors of rape had very little left to lose. The only shreds of dignity and privacy left are those conferred upon us by the sanctioned silences of others, and they are torn away repeatedly when our voices are ignored, belittled and silenced. 

It is hard to be public and loud about being raped. People don’t know what to say. They feel impacted, embarrassed, ashamed, afraid. I will never forget the women’s meeting of my Peace Group, which was convened at least partly in support of my experience. No one knew what to say to me. No one could even make eye contact with me. These were politicized women. We sat in semi-darkness, the gloom of our impotence settling heavily on our shoulders, weighted down by our collective lack of power. I wasn’t raped by anyone in the Peace Group. Brett Major was a stranger to us all. But by the same token, any one of those women could have fallen prey to his attacks. 

Nothing I am writing today is new or original. The strength of women’s collective voices is legendary. Every generation finds ourselves repeatedly thrown up and over the wall of sanctioned rape culture, landing with wails of outrage, turned on suddenly to the intersectionality of hierarchies we never imagined ourselves implicitly helping to enforce. Hierarchies where certain women find it easier to be heard, and others are more likely to be punished for speaking up; where women are pitted against one another, according to our culture and skin and education; where the bitterness expressed by one group of oppressed women silences a more privileged group of women because the shame that we experience when we realise that our lot is so much better than that of so many others. 

How dare we wail and complain about something so banal and so unpleasant? It's easier to look away. 

What right have we to raise our voices about being abused when we are so privileged?  

And so we maintain the silence, extending a tacit offer to speak, to those who start from a place of no status to speak from. That’s how all of us work together to maintain rape culture. We punish one another for it. 

By violating our bodies, rapists expose us in a shameful and painful way. Once you have been exposed like that, it’s hard to feel like it’s possible to cover up again. The wounds feel like they will never heal, and this must be obvious to everyone around us. We wonder why others remain so silent in the face of our wounds. 

We are attuned to our socially-conditioned need to take care of the feelings of other people, even at the cost of ourselves. We are skinned-alive sensitized to an outside world that openly wants us to disappear. Surviving and healing means we relearn how to conform to society’s standards and conventions. We hide our pain turn our rage inwards, in self-loathing and shame. 

Those around us seem so ashamed of our naked shame, our blood and our ruin, they sanction our silence while saying they are offering us the respect to heal our wounds. It's a lie. They speak of us using our first names, as though our exposure has reduced us from being adult women, to not quite women at all, certainly not the kind of women with last names, connections, careers, vocations. We are women who need to be shoved under the bed and forgotten. We need to be gagged for our own collective good. 

That’s not the way to deal with our pain. So well done, Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins and all the other women who are speaking out. I support you. Please don’t be chased back out of the light. Allow me to help dismantle rape culture and be part of remaking the world.

Dismantling rape culture is part of an ongoing, collective effort which works in fits and starts. We must remind one another of our individual value. We must remember to actively support one another in pointing our collective fingers at those who silence us. 

That's the Spirit (19 February 2021)

 

That’s the Spirit!

(19/02/2021)

This week I re-read Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s Raising your Spirited Child. I will always be grateful to Ms Proud, who introduced me to the idea of spirit, which has been a gamechanger for my relationship with Jack of Hearts and understanding more about who he is in a world that has often not appreciated his spirit. I’ve recommended this book to other parents I’ve met along this journey, but I have yet to meet anyone else who has read it, let alone implemented some of its ideas (apart from those kindred spirits in the Facebook group).

Parents who coast along, navigating the ups and downs of family life seemingly with no need to interrogate or acknowledge why they do they things they do, mystify me. There is always room for growth and new understandings. Even with my pursuit of knowledge and understanding, I am far from perfect. Perfection and happiness are not my goals, but becoming content with one’s self, and having the security and support to continue to pursue one’s passions describe my brand of realistic.  

Having fallen into motherhood aged 20, I realized very quickly that I needed help to learn how to be a good mother. Much of what I do has been borne of effort, self-examination, reading, talking, thinking and attending courses such as Kath Silard’s Peaceful Parenting. I had a good start, with parents who imbued me with many positive qualities and abilities, but being a mother is far from effortless for me, at least. Growing up alongside LabCat and Guitar Hero has scrambled some of the learning. I made many mistakes, some of which I would definitely go back and undo, if it were only possible.

My second round at motherhood has been challenging. There’s the upfront obvious of being in a lesbian partnership with dads also in the picture, (as opposed to being the embittered single mother defiantly working to counteract the hostility emitted intermittently by her ex-husband). There’s the fact of not bearing my children and having people question my integrity as their (non-biological) mother. (Do they really need two mums?) The world has changed a great deal, and the issues of technology and climate change constantly affect my every day journey as a mother.

As a single mother my children always came first. No matter what. Partly from a deep-seated need to protect them, I didn’t pursue a romantic relationship until they were well into their teens. I knew I wanted to try motherhood again, and I knew I could do things differently this time. I wanted to create a bigger family in which Guitar Hero and LabCat would be proud older siblings who would model their ways of being in the world. I wanted my children to be informed, and unselfconsciously embraced as part of my quirkily Jewish family. I wanted them to relate to the world without having their parents’ messed-up relationship colouring the background and intruding inconveniently at seminal moments in their lives. Of course, life was never going to be that simple!   

When Jack of Hearts was born, Brown Owl and I received a number of parenting books, each with different perspectives and recommendations. I read most of them, but Jack seemed from the very beginning, to be a different kind of child. I worried that it was his external circumstances that caused the difference. I felt extremely judged by the outside world when Jack did things differently. The messages were always about control – about saying “no”, and the child somehow falling magically into line with society’s conventions. It was not just Jack’s attraction to weapons, nor his uncanny, innovative and unconventional uses of furniture. It was Jack’s allure – the appeal of his free-spirited energy that attracted the attention of other children who usually lacked his mental and physical agility, and that led to the disapproval and ire of those children’s parents, that hammered home that Brown Owl and I were mothers who were (perhaps) “good enough”, but did not meet society’s criteria for the representative, healthy woman-headed family we felt we needed to show the outside world.

The qualities proposed by Kurcinka to help identify whether a child’s temperament falls into the categories “spirited”, “spunky” or “low-key” include Intensity, Persistence, Sensitivity, Perceptiveness, Adaptability, Regularity, Energy, First Reaction and Mood. She also looks at how these are expressed differently by people who are more introverted or more extroverted.

Aged 3, Jack was obviously intense (5 = a living staircase of emotion, up one minute, down the next; every reaction is deep and powerful), persistent (4 = never takes no for an answer), sensitive (4 = acts out parental stress; strong reaction to how things feel, whether pleasant or unpleasant), perceptive (5 = notices things most people miss; forgets multiple directions because attention is grabbed by other things), slow to adapt (5 = cries when one activity ends and another begins; may be very upset by surprises), moderately irregular (3 = slow to toilet train, needs to eat frequently in between meals), energetic (5 = when forced to stay in one place seems ready to burst; always on the move, even when sitting, fidgets), rejects at first and watches before joining in (5 = holds back before participating, immediately says no when asked to do something – especially something new), not terribly moody (2). Jack is also an extrovert, needing to get his energy from being with and bouncing off other people. He scored 38, well into the category of “spirited”.

My discovery this week that Wizard (aged 7) is also spirited, has shaken the foundations of my understanding of how to parent him. I feel like I have mis-characterised him, failed to take into account the way that his temperamental qualities distort the way he is seen (or ignored) by the world. I have a lot to learn, and to impart to Wizard. I’m excited by this, because I now have access to a palette of tools and filters which he and I can apply to life, and colour it differently for him.

Aged 7, Wizard is intense (4 = every reaction is deep and powerful), persistent (5++ = sticks to his guns, never lets go of an idea or activity until ready), sensitive (5 = has to have quiet to sleep; complains about lights, noise and smells, especially in crowds; a “selective” eater), perceptive (5 = will not be diverted from something that captures his attention until he has had his fill), slow to adapt (4 = becomes upset with changes in the routine), irregular (4 = never falls asleep at the same time), not overly energetic (2 = plays quietly for extended periods of time), rejects at first or watches before joining in (5 = learns by watching; is distressed by new activities or things; immediately says no when asked to do something), is often serious and analytical (4 = sees the flaws and what needs to be fixed; usually serious). Wizard is an introvert who needs to be able to withdraw and recharge on his own, rather than being in the midst of a crowd all of the time. He relates better to one or two friends at a time. He scores 38, just like, yet very unlike Jack.

I’ve noticed since returning from our year in Canada that like Guitar Hero and LabCat, Jack of Hearts and Wizard have formed a tight sibling bond. This makes me happy, although I’m aware that adversity and hardship have driven its formation. It is one of the things Brown Owl and I hoped the children might gain from the exchange experience.

Here’s an example of how Wizard expressed his intensity and persistence this week, as well as his reluctance to accept something new and different.

Wizard travels home from Red Deer in a pair of runners we bought at WalMart. The soles of these runners have already started to separate from their uppers, before we leave, even though they are his “inside shoes”, (alternated with snow boots for the outdoor world). We suggest and state a number of times that we intend to buy him some new shoes. Four weeks in, and he continues to refuse to entertain the idea of wearing different shoes. His shoes have become deplorably embarrassingly disgustingly wrecked.

Jack of Hearts is become enamoured with the drive to play Aussie Rules Football. Over the past month he badgers us to find him a club to join. Brown Owl does some research and discovers a club that is starting pre-season training on Thursdays. Last Thursday was hot and training was cancelled, much to Jack’s loudly and often-expressed sorrow and displeasure. As part of our negotiations around out-of-school activities, Brown Owl suggests that Wizard might also like to play footy, although he adamantly expresses many times, his aversion to being part of a team. He tells me more than once that he won’t do it.

It is 38 degrees when I pick them up from school, but I say not a word about footy training being cancelled. At the appropriate time, we get into the car to see whether anyone else is down at the oval. Wizard refuses to put on his shoes, because there is no way he is going to play footy. During the drive, Wizard and Jack have a conversation about playing footy at school. Jack very sweetly supports Wizard’s assertion at how good he (Wizard) is at playing football.

There is no one at the oval. It is too hot. Training has been cancelled again due to the Hot Weather Policy.  Football is, of course, a winter sport. However, Wizard leaps out of the car, straight after Jack, and states firmly that he is indeed, of course, going to train for footy, too!

(This turn-about would not have happened if I had continued to pressure Wizard and put words into his mouth. He needed to reach this confidence on his own. Seeing the place where training will happen helps him to project his possible successful self into the possibility of playing.)

I tell Wizard that we can go to the sports store to buy him some more shoes for school. Jack is eager to get studs, and mouthguards and other football paraphernalia. I firmly state that we are only going to buy shoes for Wizard, but that Jack is free to look around. Wizard says firmly that he doesn’t need new shoes and will not wear new shoes. Off we go. There is no point in contradicting the child.  

We arrive at the sports store, check in and sanitize our hands. Jack immediately wanders off with great gusto. I know by now that despite his constant statements of how he wants this and he needs that, he respects the intention that I stated in the first place. I’m no longer triggered by his enthusiasm. Wizard half-heartedly follows me into the store, staying close. I find the display of runners that are on sale. He doesn’t like any of them. None of them are his size. He doesn’t want new shoes.

I understand this. I really do. I spot a gadget in the corner for sizing feet and get it out. I place it on the floor and suggest that Wizard remove his shoes and stand on it, so we know what size he is. A salesperson fortuitously approaches and explains that Wizard should stand there for 10 seconds to get a heat reading of his feet! This is intriguing. It turns out that Wizard’s feet are at least size 4. I am amazed. We go back to the display stand. He still doesn’t like any of the shoes. None of them are the right size for him. I am reminded of LabCat’s astonishment late in her childhood, to discover that unlike op shops, clothing stores carry multiple sizes of the same garment.

I explain that if Wizard shows me which style he likes, the salesperson can go and find the right size for him to try on. He hates them all. Plus, from Size 3 upwards they are all lace-ups. It’s clear he cannot imagine himself wearing any of the shoes.

I notice a stack of shoe boxes under the display shelf and pull out a box marked Size 4. I open it, show Wizard. He moves marginally closer, looks into the box, relaxes ever so slightly. This time when I suggest he sit down and try it on, he is willing! I sit beside him, but the Size 4 are a little too tight. A salesperson approaches and I ask for help. Size 5 that fit well. She ties the laces and Wizard is ready to go. “I’ll buy them,” I reassure her, as Wizard gets to his feet and gingerly walks up and down the aisle. No, he doesn’t want to try any others. He has his shoes now.     

 

 

 

The Way It Is Supposed To Be (15/02/2021)

As I wave the boys off to school this morning I try hard not to feel smug. The house is mine, now. At least for a few hours. They pedal off down to the corner and I shut the driveway gates, collect the fallen passion fruits and make my way inside. 

Last night I finished reading Backman’s Britt-Marie Was Here. I reflect on how much I relate to Britt-Marie. I too, have spent years caring and putting energy into making sure things are done in the correct way, in order to forestall and avoid conflict of any kind. That way, I reason, when conflict and crisis does occur, at least everything will be manageable and leave me in a position of being able to manage it. I am my own foregone conclusion. 

My younger self believed that doing things correctly every time was a way for me to control the universe. If I hung out the socks in pairs, the world might end, and it would be my fault, because there was always an odd sock left at the bottom of the basket. Not wanting the world to end, I did my utmost to prevent that, by doing everything correctly. Boy did I regret it when I did fail, and things did go wrong, or someone I loved got hurt, or whenever I made a simple mistake. Although I have consciously let go of that magical thinking, it remains easier to blame myself, rather than hold others accountable and responsible for doing things that affect me and those I love. 

I am a superb manager. I’m laughing at myself, queen of my domain, trying not to be smug as I tour my patch of country, absorbed by mundane tasks, taking in with pleasure the smells and the dampness of the earth, saying hello to the chickens, feeding the fish, checking on the portulaca I spread out in the poppy patch yesterday, moving the sprinklers, stroking the cats, flowing from one small task to another, and enjoying every moment of it. I plan what I will do next – feed the chooks, move the sprinkler, collect the seven sunburned quinces, hang out the washing, move the sprinkler, wash the dishes, chop the quinces, empty the compost, turn on the slow cooker, turn off the sprinkler and go walking with Chestnut. I even find the A5 envelopes I was sure were somewhere in our capacious cupboards, perfect for mailing the photographs I promised to post for Brown Owl. 

Last night I finished reading Backman’s Britt-Marie Was Here, but I found it hard to let go of the novel and get to sleep. I wanted a more conclusive ending, even though the point of the novel was that there was no point. What will happen next? Maybe Britt-Marie will make some unexpected choices? 

I listen to the night sounds of Kilburn. People leave, car doors slam, conversations drift... Someone whistles merrily on the footpath outside our home. I quiver uneasily, wandering through my mental checklist to ensure I’ve kept my side of the bargain and done everything I possibly can to secure the house against intruders. I breathe deeply, start listing fruits and vegetables in alphabetical order to soothe myself to sleep. The whistling continues. I am lulled, almost asleep, stalled on the letter ‘u’ when my mind bursts abruptly into explosions of colour as the merry whistler changes his tune and lets out an almighty bellow, just for the fun of it, I suppose, right outside our house. It is strange how stress and fear makes me see sound in a way that I usually don’t. 

I nudge the brick to prop open the side gate, where its broken profile aligns perfectly against the corrugated iron. Birds crisscross in the sky, shrieking and oblivious to my gaze. Hello lorikeets, I say. Hello galahs! 

How much of my being and my doing do I spend in avoiding conflict? What don’t I know that I don’t know; what lies behind that veil? What is my pay-off for managing the lives of my family with such finesse? What do I lose by prioritizing other people’s comfort at the cost of my inner world? If I were to draw my life as a pie chart, how big would I allow my slice of selfishness to be? And besides, I hasten to redirect myself – no one has asked me not to be myself; no one has asked me not to place the needs of others ahead of my own needs; I have created my own life and therefore I must lie in it. 

Britt-Marie does not avoid conflict. She says what she thinks because it’s the right thing to do, and damn the consequences for anyone else. She is always right, (not that she’s judging). She stays silent when that is the right thing to do. She believes (as do I) that she is doing her best, that she has a wonderful life, that there’s nothing she’s missing if she says there’s not. She weeps into a towel in the stillness of the night because she is overwhelmed and scared and has no one to turn to for comfort, because that’s the way her life turns out despite her best intentions. 

Some people wouldn’t recognize an indirect reference to themselves it if came labelled with a name tag. Wizard’s not like that. The other night when I'm putting him to bed, he struggles with getting the covers just right and he absently calls me an idiot. I’m not an idiot, I mutter in response and he goes rigid, upset by the inference. He proceeds to climb out of bed and into ours, refuses to speak, refuses to be comforted, won't accept my apology until I make him a bed on the floor, drag his unresponsive dead weight onto it, rub his back and sing him to sleep before getting into my own bed next to Brown Owl to continue reading about Britt-Marie. As soon as I turn off the light, Wizard appears in our bed again, so I leave him to it and sleep on the floor in his room instead. I feel terrible for burdening the small boy with a label he doesn’t deserve and has no way of resisting. I know I will have to make it right with him in the morning, because he’s not an idiot. Neither am I.

Jack (of Hearts) is so heartily bored on Sunday afternoon that he lies moaning along the top of the couch like a panther with a stomachache, while Brown Owl doggedly tries to get her school work done at the desk beside him. I’m outside in the poppy patch, spreading out the portulaca seedlings that are popping up in clumps, so I put my head in the window and offer to kick the footy with him. He is sullen at first, but when he understands that my offer is genuine, he relaxes. We have a great interaction until he is ready to stop. I don’t call quits, even though part of me is bored and the portulaca is calling. It’s Sunday afternoon, I tell myself. This doesn’t happen very often. Maybe it’s not the way it is supposed to be, but this is the way it is. I smile. I mark. I kick. I encourage, strengthening the bonds between us. 

I love my life in so many ways. I feel smug. I feel privileged. I feel entitled. I feel lucky. I feel safe, most of the time. I feel like my head’s above the water and I’m treading strongly in the right direction. Until the moment it all stops, and I don’t. Because making change takes courage and grit. My life is far from gritty – I’ve worn the edges smooth by my need to keep things pleasant and calm. I endeavour to see only what I want to see, and to wipe away anything that sticks out in a dangerous or unsightly manner. 

The knowledge that change will only occur through my instigation unsettles me like gluten unhinges my small intestine. I don’t want to be uncomfortable. But if I continue to make do, to inhabit the periphery, to seek solace and pleasure only in the ephemeral, I will stay here, treading water and getting nowhere. Naturally, it’s easier for me to consider making changes that will benefit the children first, and me incidentally. 

In my heart of hearts I know that things are not the way they are supposed to be. I cannot maintain our life the way it is supposed to be. Something has to give. Something has to bend, or break. I don’t intend that something to be me, because I’ve been bent and I’ve been broken and that wasn’t much fun. 

So who gets to say how things are supposed to be? I want to see things the way they are. The magic is in seeing what is, acknowledging what is, and being in the now, rather than projecting oneself endlessly into the illusion of some perfect future.

Rite of Return (27 January 2021)

Right of Return

(January 27 2021)

this one is for family past, present, future, earthside and otherwise

for the threads of connection that interweave our memories and identities

into intricate, undecipherable patternsto which in my human state

I cannot help but attempt to ascribe meaning

 Within the mostly unspoken apocryphy of my family’s oral history is a story that goes like this:

The decision was given to him. He decided to divorce the family. At this moment, Authority told him that his family did not wish to have any further contact with him. On the other side of the Wall, family was told that he wished to have no further contact with them. Over the years, the telephone would ring from time to time. The family would pick up the receiver, say “Hello?”, to a pregnant silence to which none of us could appropriately respond.

Stilted and categorical language is used to talk around and explain the issue. There is talk of “bonding” of “acceptance” of “love”, as though these are static and intert one-time actions, rather than evidence of a spectrum of behaviour that ebbs and flows between individuals and across time and experience. Authority exerts an unexpected force, rearranging aspects of our lives that are held in balance only by virtue of remaining untested.

The silence on the other end of the line exemplifies the perfection of the schism that Authority set into place, to divide, destroy, isolate, unbridge and sever the threads of connection that Authority denied had ever existed between us.

The silence that surrounds my brother remained unbroken for many years, shrouded in shame, confusion, fear and rage. Even now, speaking his name aloud shatters the fragile peace that we have all learned to live with, to walk around and deliberately not focus upon. Water under the bridge, so they say.

This year is thirty-four years since we lived in the same home together. I covered up my shock at his departure with feverish Year 12 exam preparation. To this day I am unable to access any memory of family therapy, family meetings, that led up to his leaving. It is conflated with the messy years and experiences of growing up among a bunch of siblings who all had our own difficulties and things to deal with.

Many of my stories bear echoes of his departure – like the day I left home, and was stopped from farewelling my smallest brother, thus placing what seemed for ages like an unbreachable barrier between my right of return and my place as his biggest sister.  

Other echoes live in the experiences and memories of other portions of my family: the young man whose sudden and violent death fractured what had seemed so solid, thus exposing those who remained, to a transformative questioning and healing process; the brother who did return, and remains, with his own family, a treasured yet lightly held member of the extended family; the many who have married in and been adopted into the family, causing tensions and loosenings to which we all have had to adapt; the sister who left to seek her fortune in other lands, and who continues to fiercely defend her right to remain separate and yet connected; the father who disappeared right into the Eastern Block, abandoning his children to their step-father; the aunties who conspired against their sister to love and nurture her children no matter the depths to which her life choices had sent them; those whose allegiance to religiosity and matters of faith either tie them closer to their family, or hold them further apart… there are so many echoes.

It is hard to grow up. The kinds of things that make it harder are the secrets and the lies we tell ourselves. Unquestioned and unspoken ideas, formed before we can even talk, become embedded in our identities. It takes time, work and experience to unravel these and rewrite ourselves into the kind of beings we consent to include in the vortex of our family. Growing up is a process that never really ends but is at its most intense before the age of 20. Until Authority intervenes, inclusion of the one in the throes of growing up is a given.

The gift of inclusion entails rights, responsibilities, behaviours, communication, actions, reciprocation, acceptance and a struggle to delineate and create one’s space within the whole, dynamic fabric of family. Some of us do swim into the river of memory with little turmoil and lots of entitlement. Some of us struggle to regain our separateness, and flop about on the riverbank for a while, bereft and breathless before finally plunging back into those turbulent, life-giving waters of family. Some of us are too afraid to move, lest we disturb the semblance of sense that comforts our need for stability. Some of us are born so strong that it never occurs to us to worry about how our choices affect those around us, and indeed, the rest of us move to make room.

What of those who separate themselves and decide they do not wish to be part of our family any longer? Is this a single, irrevocable choice? Do the rest of us get to deal unwillingly with one other person’s choice no matter how that choice affects us? Must all of us adhere to a painfully polite, collective forgetting, and a forgoing of future contact?

The intense growing up years are often fraught between children and parents. This is the norm, no matter what Authority likes to pretend. Each of us battles the push-pull of self. The burdens of our individual past experiences often obscure what stands and does not stand in the way. As an interested bystander, I find myself on the periphery, wanting desperately to soften the blows that rain down upon every party, to smooth the tensions, to wave a restorative wand of justice and peace and love. My inherited longing for the water to pass under the bridge and wash away the grit pulls painfully at every fibre of my being.  

I know from my own experience as daughter, sister, niece, wife, aunt, mother, that relationships do not remain static. Decisions are never final. There is always room for manoeuvre, for growth, for new understanding. This knowledge does not arrive at an opportune teachable moment. I work hard for this knowledge. The work is often painful.

The consequences of that deep pain belong to each of us. We need to own and acknowledge our pain. The right of return is the right of forgiveness. Forgiveness is but one facet of transformation and growth, a gift for which each of us waits interminably, because only we can forgive ourselves.  

Those who return do so, for their own sake, not for ours. We can hold space for them that is malleable, soft and welcoming, but that neither neglects nor forgets the sharp and the bitter. The right of return neither ignores, nor erases the pain engendered by departure. Upon return, a person can choose and form with intention, their place within our family that has always been there, whether any of us we knew it, or not.  

I appeal to my family – uphold the right of return. Tuck up the frayed ends, add a stitch or two to keep the time, love one another and remain optimistic.

Maybe in the meantime, our family can formulate some kind of rite of return, in hope for the future.

In Our Skins Again (24 January 2021)

We are all in our skins again. Something shifts into place, likely the result of a cascade of events. I breathe more easily when the skip is removed. The stack of stuff for the hard rubbish collection, booked for March, doesn’t bother me. I’m still working on the chicken run. Having calculated carefully and not buying any at the stupidmarket, I feel unaccountably happy and relieved when our box of who gives a crap arrives, and I can stack the colourful rolls of toilet paper on the shelves.

Brown Owl returns to work this week. Although sad that her holidays have finished so soon, she seems eager to get back into it. The boys and I adjust quickly to her lengthy absences five days per week. I allow myself to accept that for Brown Owl, her work is her joy and her creativity and her social life. I allow myself to stop feeling guilty that I am different. The niggling rub of feeling as though I’m not doing enough to keep the family afloat is displaced by the realization that keeping home and family is an awful lot. I must remember to keep room for me.  

When we were on holiday in Red Deer, I remember saying to Brown Owl that the boys and I had a different sense of time than she did. We lacked a sense of urgency. This caused a lot of clashes, as she tried to hurry us along before we were ready. We have made these adjustments before. When I announce to Wizard and Jack that the school routine will start again from Monday, they are relieved!  

I want to keep my sense of calm and timeliness. I measure my days against my doings, and don’t overfill them. I remember that some things do take more time than I want them to; that it’s sometimes necessary to make more than one attempt to solve a problem; that my subconscious is good at coming up with ideas and innovations, if I allow myself the time to dream.

We buy a new bed for Jack. I spend Saturday feeling pleased with myself and setting it up. Jack loves it. Wizard is marvellously sleeping in his own bed for the whole night, after a year of musical beds.  

Yesterday Jack accompanies me to the hardware store. It is my fourth attempt to resolve the lack of a handle for the tap on the rainwater tank dedicated to the garden. I have consulted several workers from two hardware stores, as well as the Dads, to no avail, but Jack and I came home with a couple of bits of plastic that finally work. Eureka! This morning, expecting a 42 degree day, I get up extra early and water the plants with gorgeously soft rainwater.

My mind is slowly loosening. The hard knots of tension that I’ve kept hold of and ignored because I had no space to unravel them, tentatively stretch out tendrils, test the waters. Plans and ideas begin to take shape.

One of the many lists in my head is of “things we couldn’t have with family day care”. Among other things, this includes a trampoline, rose bushes, a dog. A similar list includes things that were broken or made impossible due to family day care, like our window blinds. When I dutifully got the cords shortened, to reduce strangulation hazard, many of the cords became strained and broke altogether, causing a great deal of difficulty in using the blinds.

I discover that Jim’s franchise has a section dedicated to blind repairs, and I book the local franchisee to come and repair our blinds next week. Hooray!

I spend lengthy periods of time in the fire pit of the front yard, sifting gravel through a small plastic container, and placing the gravel in two areas in the back yard. The firepit will become a sand pit, and the sand pit, which is currently outside the western wall of the Big Room, will be removed, to make way for a trampoline. We’re still working on the dog.

Jack requests that we visit the local library. It is a sad place, compared to the Red Deer Library, where series are massed in their entirety, rather than being broken up with one volume here, and another in a different branch. I notice that our bookshelves are in complete disarray, but there are several boxes of books in storage, so I’ll wait to rearrange them all at once.

The list of “things in storage” includes the boys’ school uniforms, but I take them to school and buy them each one shirt and a pair of shorts. The school leadership is completely new, but we don’t get to meet the new Principal, or her Deputy. I hope that when we reconnect with the other families, we will feel at home. At least we know their teachers. I arrange for our stored stuff to come home next weekend, so they will have to make do with their own hats this week This morning Jack asks whether he can “start school early”.  

Things gradually regain a familiar shape. When I bring out collections of toys in the Big Room, Wizard begins to play again. He drags all the mattresses and cushions around the house, making cubbies to hide in. Another day this week he and Jack and a friend make a muddy slip and slide on an old tarp in the backyard.

Here’s a story typical of Wizard, who has been digging in his heels and refusing to leave home. I tell him during the week that when school starts, this behaviour will cease, and he will go back to school. Here’s hoping:

Brown Owl and I buy him a bike on the same day we buy bikes for Jack and me. Wizard takes one look at the bike and refuses to consider that he might make it his own. He won’t go near it, let alone sit on it and try it out.  

I contact the seller to ask whether he is open to swapping the bike we’d bought, for a smaller one. The seller agrees. To sweeten the deal, I offer him two small bikes we no longer need. I put all three bikes on our super-duper new bike rack and drive the boys to the seller’s home in Athelstone. We are late, because Wizard refuses to put shoes on. It takes nearly half an hour just to get him into the car. When we arrive, Jack and I wheel the bikes up the driveway to the seller’s front door. The seller shows us the bike he has selected for the swap. I am slightly concerned we won’t get to choose, but Wizard won’t get out of the car and look at the bike. So I thank him, put the bike on the rack, and drive home.

When she arrives home that evening, I tell Brown Owl about what happened. I ask for her help. Wizard climbs out from the kitchen cupboard he is hiding in while listening to our conversation, takes Brown Owl’s hand and happily leads her outside to show her his new bike. A few minutes later, they go for a ride around the block. Wizard’s disinclination to engage is now ancient history; even irrelevant, now. He probably wouldn’t deny that he reacted that way, but it might make him giggle.

 

The Body of a Blue-Tongue

17/01/2021 

A yard inhabited by a blue-tongue lizard probably doesn’t house snakes. Daddy Long Legs spiders eat Red-Back spiders. This may be common knowledge for Australians, but not for people new to this place. No matter how many times a person might be told that the likelihood of encountering a snake is small, and no matter how many times a person is told that no one dies of being bitten by a Red Back (anymore), finding that nasty looking spider with the red splotch on its back, or seeing scales under a log is going to cause a visceral effect of flight, fight or freeze. I still feel that in the bottom of my belly on such occasions, and I’m by no means phobic. 

It is not so much that the skip is filled with things I deemed valuable, that are now destined for landfill. It is the utter contempt with which they were thrown into the space behind the shed, to languish and deteriorate beyond any kind of future usefulness to anyone at all. 

I come across the body of the blue-tongue lizard whilst clearing the chicken run of the furniture, containers, gardening equipment, collections of rocks and wood, and outdoor toys. It died at right-angles, wrapped around the corner of a small bookshelf. I don’t know, but imagine the small bookshelf being viciously shoved up against the lizard’s body, trapping it in place. It was a good sized adult blue-tongue lizard, with its distinctively broad, flattened shape, clearly (to me at least) not a snake of any kind. This is hard, even for me to forgive. 

Empaths pick up on the lingering fragments of other people’s feelings and experiences. I’ve stopped telling myself that it’s imaginary. When we came home, I picked up horror, loneliness, sadness and rage. It takes time to sort out emotions. They need to be sorted before they can be dealt with. 

Like everyone, I carry remembered emotions and sensations from my own journey through life, but as an empath I also feel for those around me. It is exhausting dealing with other people’s strong emotions. I have often felt pressured to repress my own feelings, in order to step up and respond to those around me. But my need to express and feel isn’t alleviated through repression. Pretending emotions away leads to mental and emotional distress and disease. 

I feel sad. I feel disappointed. I feel uncertain about my future. I feel so much, that dealing with life right now is just about all I am able to manage. I can’t look for work. I can’t plan ahead more than a couple of days at a time. I am floating in an asteroid field, dodging obstacles and desperately clinging to ideas of who I am and who I want to be. I feel I need to be cautious about what I can say to certain people. Self-censorship has always been part of my identity, but never more so than right now. It means I start from a point of defensiveness. I snap before I have a chance to assess the perceived threat that I’m responding to. I do not like the way I’m communicating with Brown Owl. It’s not fair for her to be treading on eggshells around my warped places. 

This is an extension of how I felt during 2020. Every plan I made, every intention was tested, tried and mostly found wanting. So much was discarded. My identity felt reduced to that of consumer, mother, wife. Stranger in a strange land. 

Of course, there were bright spots of friendship and connection. I don’t want to paint it all black and white. The country itself was incredibly welcoming. The big Alberta skies, the sunshine, mountains, lakes, farmland and even the small gritty suburbs of Red Deer itself invited me in to explore and settle. 

It was difficult to settle when my every decision, choice and action as a mother, wife and human being was relentlessly put to the mettle. 

Inevitably, Wizard and Jack played, bounced, broke, made, ate, drank, bathed and did all the things that human beings do. The push-pull I felt as an unwelcome alien in that house meant that my maternal instincts were squeezed and twisted into knots. I could not stop my children from living. I could not stop my children from being. I could not manage to reduce their days in that house to sitting in front of the screen and keeping their bodies from moving. I had to remind myself that I didn’t want to do that, either. 

For now, I remind myself to breathe. I allow myself space to respond. I try not to jump to conclusions. I pause and ask for time to articulate what’s in my head. I silence the perpetual judgments made about me by myself. I give myself permission to wait for the right time to present itself. 

One of the funniest things the day we arrived home from quarantine was opening the pile of mail that had collected. I first sorted it by recipient, and then commenced tearing open envelopes that were addressed to me. Oh – I’m due for a pap smear. Oh – an endoscopy, too. Oh – a home testing kit for bowel cancer. Poo. I know I need to see the dentist, and I have an intention to find myself a GP I can relate to. And – yes, I need another mammogram as well. 

It wasn’t so amusing to discover my driver’s license had been revoked. I put that down to inexperience. We would never advise people in our place to assume their snail-mail could wait for their return before being opened. We would arrange for a trusted person to open it for us during our absence. 

The image in my mind of the body of the blue tongue lizard surfaces at surprising moments, as flashbacks are wont to do. The small bookshelf where it died was one I bought for LabCat many years ago when we lived in Ways Road in Hampstead Gardens. LabCat went to a birthday party workshop and painted some wooden hibiscus flower shapes. We painted the bookshelf and affixed the flowers. It matched her cobbled-together desk, and it looked pretty. 

At this time I was consciously learning how to live in a rental property and assert my sense of style and purpose. My children, Guitar Hero and LabCat were around the same age Jack is now. They wore exclusively op shop clothes, and all of our belongings had previously belonged to other people, including the bookshelf. But it was not beyond our means to make useful things look pretty.

Acute Culture Shock

I come in from planting the vegetables that Chestnut brought me a couple of hours after we arrived home: eggplants, roma tomatoes, white zucchinis, capsicum lovingly grown and nurtured. The zucchinis, cucumbers and tomatoes my Dad planted and nurtured for me are doing well now that the temperature has cooled off. Last night I checked the compost bins and one was full of yummy looking compost crawling with slater beetles and woody cockroaches. I dug it into the surface of the vegetable patch I was planting today. The dirt there (I cannot call it soil) is dusty and hydrophobic. I will keep working on that. 

It was a shock to come home and see the place so dry and neglected. I made a rapid tour of the yard, as I’d planned, and found the apple tree and macadamia trees were gone, but the other trees are OK. The ground under the mulberry tree is littered with the dessicated remains of the mulberry crop. Similarly, the apricot tree seems not so densely green, and I can see where the apricots were left to rot on the tree. Oh well. I hope the birds enjoyed some of them. 

There are three beautiful shubunkins remaining in the pond, and a water lily bud is barely beginning to open. The pond is full of green water weed, which I have gradually scrubbed off. The filter is working well enough to clear the water, but I needed to give it multiple scrubs. All the lush plants around the pond are reduced to small clumps with lots of dirt. I have formed a plan for the area, and it’s coming back to life. 

I’ve booked a hard rubbish collection. The termite people are coming at the end of the week, and I’ll talk to them about the big bait stations I’ve found lying around the house, from some other pest control company. I’ve arranged for the lawn mowing man to start taking care of the grass again. I’ve bought a new bed for Jack, whose bed was dismantled, rebuilt and now falling to pieces. Brown Owl has been working on the bicycle situation, and the cats are home. We are gradually finding more things to deal with, as well as the energy to deal with them. 

It’s somehow easier to throw away things I’d treasured and created after they have been neglected for a year. Our chicken run is crammed with things of this nature that are now rubbish. I’m working hard to prioritise all the work that needs to be done, without feeling swamped. There’s time. We are home now. 

For the first three days I couldn’t face the yard at all. I started with the front yard, putting the sprinkler on and soaking the ground. It was very hot, and I did this in the early morning. I could feel the earth beginning to breathe again, and seeing the flock of honeyeaters in the Silver Princess was a sight I could not tear myself away from, just drinking it in. 

There are many things we would do differently now; things we would advise others against. Doing an exchange was a risky process, and a lot of trust was involved. A lot of trust was broken. The notes Brown Owl and I made do not seem to have been consulted, but I think much of that information was irrelevant in the tsunami of difference that must have overwhelmed our Canadian counterpart. 

Culture shock is an interesting experience. When we arrived in Red Deer I had no idea how to engage with the yard. It took me three weeks to work out how to collect the mail. The snow was so foreign to me. I can imagine that in reverse, for our Canadian counterpart. 

Learning how to take care of us day to day was an enormous task. Working my way around the kitchen was difficult. The refrigerator door was full of foods I wasn’t used to. I couldn’t find things that seemed like staples. I asked a lot of questions that may have seemed odd to the people around us. It took time before I was ready to try to drive, or to venture into new shops and start reading labels, for example. I never figured out a general term for “lemonade” and when the boys wanted “milkshakes” in the middle of winter, this seemed impossible to the Tim Hortons server. Canadians are very seasonal people, and they wait for the correct seasons to experience the appropriate flavours and decorations. (What kind of child needs a cold milkshake in the middle of winter?) 

We had been in Red Deer for less than a week. Brown Owl was at her new school, getting her head around the classroom when I called her frantically requesting that she drive to a house we were standing in front of, in the extreme cold, feeling as though it were a matter of life and death. I had bullied the boys into walking with me from our house to their new school (it was still Christmas break), which we had been told was a “9-minute walk”. Getting them out the door was hard. Walking through the snow was a challenge. It wasn’t late in the day, but it felt dark and foreboding. (The Alberta sunshine was a welcome revelation, but that came later.) By the time I called Brown Owl Wizard was refusing to go another step. Jack was shivering inside his winter gear. I couldn’t jolly them into walking home. This was culture shock. 

When we got home three days ago to The Little House of Colours, the house felt so small and cramped. Our luggage filled the lounge room. Wizard said that our Canadian counterpart had “made the house smaller”, when actually he has grown. A lot. 

Whilst unpacking and putting things away, differences made me double take. I had walked through the laundry many times before realizing the cupboards that used the line the wall and house our linen were inexplicably disappeared. There was a microwave sitting on the kitchen counter, and the kitchen counter was a different colour than it had been when we left. This was only the beginning. 

I opened storage cupboards to discover they were crammed with stuff deemed unnecessary to our Canadian counterpart. Fair enough I suppose – I also packed boxes and bags of extraneous stuff and stored them in her basement. The bathroom cupboards were full of cosmetics and hair products. The linen cupboard was full of curtains and cushions and sheets and towels we couldn’t use. 

During the sorting process I realized that our stuff had been just stuffed into the cupboards willy nilly. I’ve engaged in a forensic analysis over the last 72 hours, and I think I’ve worked out how it may have happened. 

Imagine feeling so squeamish that you cannot bring yourself to sleep in a bed that someone else has made for you? Need I defend myself by assuring that everything was clean when we left it? Here’s what I imagine may have happened: 

We arrived after our long trip, to a shabby house in a rundown part of town. It’s so hot! The walls are painted in bizarre colours and nothing matches. I already feel overwhelmed and in need of calm. Plus, everything looks so old and scratched and dirty. I can’t stand it. It’s so filthy and there are spider webs all over it. The red brick looks dirty, and the wood of the other part of the house is unpainted. I don’t understand why it looks that way. There are no screens on the windows. And it’s hot. I find some people with a pressure cleaner and arrange to have the whole house cleaned on the outside. I strip all the beds. We can’t sleep on their bedding. I stuff all the sheets and mattress protectors into a cupboard and replace them with new bedding I’ve just purchased. I didn’t plan to spend all this money on things they should have provided for me, but what choice do I have? These people are so strange. Why did they leave all their beans and rice for me? I can’t eat other people’s food, even if they left me a letter asking me to. I’m just going to move all these bottles of food into the cupboard and replace them with food that I’m used to. And what is it with all these mattresses and cushions? The beds are hopeless. Inappropriate. The rooms are so small and cramped. Why are there windchimes and strange homemade looking ornaments banging against all the external walls? I’ll rip them all off and throw them into the shed. I don’t want to have to deal with them. And these cupboards in the laundry with all these used 

sheets and towels? I’m obviously not going to use them, so they can go into the shed as well. The yard is a wilderness, crawling with bugs and spiders. I feel sick and anxious even walking outside the door. I’m not choosing to feel this way. It’s a response to the environment. I’m not going to be able to sleep in this house. I might go a whole year without proper sleep. I don’t have anyone here to help me and I’m not only responsible for myself. How am I going to take care of my child? Their car is impossibly old. It’s all scratched up and they obviously eat in the car. I hope they aren’t letting their dirty children eat in my new car. What kind of people are they, to think they can take their dirty rough boys to live in someone else’s home? What am I going to find when I get home? What are they doing to my house?     

The rage and bitterness I’ve expressed over the year has been displaced now with a feeling of gratitude. I am older, and from a different generation than our Canadian counterpart. My experiences of poverty and middle classness form who I am. My culture is very different. My style is the polar opposite. That doesn’t make me wrong and her right. It doesn’t make her wrong and me right. It’s just different. 

Culture shock is an interesting experience. I feel that I entered the exchange with an openness and expectation that as a small family we needed to be ready to contend with difference, rather than the other way around. I feel that helped me to learn how to live in another place, which was my impetus for doing an exchange.

QP#14 (15) Quarantine, Day 14 (15)

Getting out won’t feel surreal. It may feel hyper-real. Brown Owl says that for the first time she’s feeling a little reluctant to leave. We’ve all felt like prisoners at one time or another. What is astonishing to me is that Jack and Wizard have accepted the situation meekly, all this time. 

We play a lot of ball today, but the children are unfocused, continually collapsing any structure into wrestling and silliness. I sense their tension. I share their tension. Our nerves are stretched, as we wait. 

Wizard and I manage to complete a Beyblade tournament, only because I look into his eyes a few times and remind him that I’m not the one who is making him angry right now, and that I really do want to be able to finish the tournament for once. He declares a draw between the final two beys and I creakily pull myself off the floor, feeling satisfied. All this yoga and PE with Joe has been amazing, but I’m feeling stiff and a little sore this afternoon. 

Throughout the day, I potter around putting things slyly into garbage bags and sorting stuff. I have bags of stuff to pass onto 3 different families in the hotel, all labelled. I hope this goes smoothly, as I am required to leave the hotel before returning with the bags. 

We have so many masks it seems ludicrous, and we wonder what it’s going to be like to wear shoes for the first time in 2 weeks. Gradually, the room retracts into its emptiness. It’s not sad, or stressful, as it was in leaving Red Deer. We are all excited. We chatter continuously about how it’s going to be, what we are going to do, where we want to go… but none of it seems quite real yet. 

We come first in the hotel quiz today. There were several questions we got wrong, and a couple that we guessed. Jack supplies us with Gordon’s number: 4 (Thomas the Tank Engine). Wiz has picked up on some of the political and social goings on in the USA, and brightly enquires what it was all about. Brown Owl tells him that T#^%p has finally accepted that he lost the election. 

I hear from Guitar Hero that although he won’t come to pick us up in the morning, he will visit us soon. I am so happy to hear that, because I miss him very much. It will be wonderful to see people and hug them. My mother and my brother will collect us and all of our burgeoning belongings. 

We have a long chat with Brown Owl's folks, trying not to make too many travel plans, but unable to avoid wistfully wondering whether we will be able to go to some of the places we want to. 

We sit around watching TV for what seems like a very long time until the dinner knock. We have pizza for dinner, and bags of popcorn. Unfortunately, there’s no vegetarian pizza, although there are 3 chicken pizzas and one gluten free pizza. Brown Owl calls the kitchen staff, who deliver her a vegetarian pizza within 10 minutes. 

We adults select a movie that we’d like to watch with the children, but in the end we get them showered and hair-washed and just watch the usual two programs before reading and putting them to sleep. 

I have a hard time getting to sleep after finishing Pachinko. I lie awake for three hours, then get up and take some melatonin and water. I still can’t fall asleep. Wizard has come into our bed, sleepily complaining that he wasn’t able to sleep all this time, as well. I doubt that, but retreat to his bed where I finally fall asleep. 

I dream that I’m about to go swimming in ice water. I am with Laurie, whom I met in Red Deer, and a few kids. To reach the place to get into the water, there are two options. One seems too difficult for me, but everyone else manages it. I opt to climb up an icy incline which has been created for beginners (like me) and, apparently, the Royals. I struggle to the top, to find there’s a lip that bends the wrong way, and I am unable to climb over it. I slide back down, feeling stupid, but try it two more times before the others return to find out what’s happened to me. For the expedition I am kitted out with a hand saw. There’s some talk about needing to attack before being attacked (by fish?). I’m not sure I ever made it to the icy water. 

I slowly and reluctantly rise out of sleep, eventually hearing Brown Owl announce to the children that she is about to get in the shower. I’m confused, because the sound of the cooler and the sound of the shower are very similar, but I’m also relieved that it’s not too late in the morning. Brown Owl tells me that Jack and Wizard woke up at 5am, crowing that we all get to go home today!

QP#13 Quarantine, Day 13

Tomorrow is our last day. When Brown Owl talked to the cop last night, she said we had only one more day, and he corrected her, saying that it’s actually two more days. Brown Owl replied laughing, – yes two nights, but only one more full day! The medical staff have commenced asking us again about whether we are still maintaining quarantine. As if we would now start getting silly about it. Not bloody likely. 

The boys are happy when they get coco pops and toast for breakfast. Brown Owl is delighted when there’s marmalade for her toast. It’s funny that we enjoy having the same foods over and over. 

We have a conversation during the day about what our first dinner should be when we get home. Wizard suggests all the bough food he’s familiar with – Lulu’s Pizza, Beyond India and the Ghan Kebab House. Brown Owl and I groan, and suggest homemade sushi. 

I overhear Brown Owl’s side of a conversation with my Mum, where Brown Owl asserts that she doesn’t like shopping as much as I love it. I feel it’s necessary to clarify this – I actually hate the kind of shopping where one goes from store to store, seeing what’s there, trying things on, comparing attributes and finally making a purchase. However, I do love being at the tiller of our household ship, considering what’s there and what’s needed, making a list and going to get it all from familiar establishments. I love organizing and sorting and putting it all away. 

And yes, I am laughing at myself – just a little, today! 

I suggest a game of Cluedo after breakfast. In the time it takes to get the game set up, Wizard has selected the who, where and what cards and wants to put them into the envelope. Brown Owl coaxes him down, citing fairness, and Wizard takes the face-saving route of refusing to play at all. But he wants to play, so (ever the innovator), he invents another rule to suit himself. He will play the remaining 3 characters left and roll the dice three times each round. No. We don’t bow to his will. This time. Yes, he may use all three characters, but he doesn’t get three turns to our one. This kind of rigmarole is familiar to us, but Wizard isn’t all that riled up just at the moment, and we end up having a good game, won by Brown Owl, whose lucky guess at who where and what turns out to be correct! 

These are the birds I’ve seen from our windows: sparrows, swallows, one pelican, pigeons, an ibex and the boys say they have seen a magpie. 

Daddy Flippy spends a long time chatting with Wizard and Jack, while I write and colour. They love playing with the backgrounds and filters. Brown Owl and I reflect on how good it is, that our boys have other adults in their lives who aren’t so tired of being with them. 

The bouncing on the beds continues. Jack challenges himself to jump from bed to bed. The throwing of the balls continues. The piggy in the middle and bey blade tournaments continue. Wizard invents a new move where he stands on the bed with the jellyfish ball in his hands, jumps up, drops the ball and kicks out with both legs, landing on his back. This is tricky to coordinate. He doesn’t always manage it, but it’s spectacular when he does. 

We embark on a new 30 day yoga journey with Adriene. We’re going to take it even more slowly than she suggests, and do each day twice, over the next two months. We talk about getting up early to do yoga when school goes back. We talk about doing yoga in The Big Room. With such intention we have a good chance of success. PE with Joe is invigorating, rather than exhausting. I find sitting cross-legged for a long period of time just breathing is painful. It’s all a bit intense and mixed up. When we finally get a dog, I’m going to enjoy walking it. I think walking will remain my favourite kind of exercise. 

We settle down mid-afternoon on the children’s beds to watch The Queen’s Corgi. I’m not too impressed by its depiction of toxic femininity and toxic masculinity. I shouldn’t be too surprised, I suppose, as it’s a mainstream animation attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator. There are a lot of sly digs at Prince Philip as well. Is it about the relationship between the UK and the USA? 

When I pit in my mind, the President and Prince Philip, neither of them comes across terribly well. Yet it’s not satisfying to compare the fates of those two top dogs (the British Prince with the American President) with Charlie and Rex (the canine top dogs), when one gets everything he wants, (i.e. the restoration of his position as the Queen’s favourite, his own chosen mate, life in Buckingham Palace with all his friends), but the other gets shipped without consent to be mated with the American bitch, thus losing his own self-respect, dignity and the camaraderie he’d been willing to sacrifice in order to gain power over his former best friend. 

I am so tired of crass and boring movies for children. I am so tired of settling for mediocre and needing to battle against media depictions of gender that are tired, dangerous, and violent. 

After dinner, I have a conversation with my sister. We talk about exercise, melatonin, parenting, anti-depressants and being the daughters of our mother. We have each other’s backs. There’s plenty of love to go around. 

Jack and I read the rollicking closing scenes of a John Flanagan novel. I’m listening to Wizard and Brown Owl, and find a stopping place at the same time, which Jack is not too happy about. Brown Owl and I then read for some time, marvelling at how easily the boys have gone to sleep. 

We are so fortunate that none of us got sick. This experience would have been so much worse, if we had. The day after tomorrow, we get to go home at 9:15 in the morning. I feel so excited about this. I know though, that no matter how quickly and efficiently we pack everything up tomorrow, the time for departure is set, and will not be affected. So I just keep breathing and try to stay calm.

QP#12 Quarantine Post, Day 12

It was LabCat who put me onto Instagram last year, when I wanted an audience for all the beautiful things I was crafting. I don’t spend a lot of time there, but love looking at her artworks. Today I decide to use one of her friends’ prompts and join Brown Owl in doing some drawing. 

The prompts are:  

 #1 must be wearing a ball and chain;

 #2 must be half-fish;

 #3 must be sweeping. 

Mine is not manga, and it’s not a replica of the original. I draw a fish-person in a green gingham apron, ball and chain around one of two feet, tail jutting out behind, in a warrior stance, brandishing a broom over its head, poised to bring it down HARD and break that chain (rendered in coloured pencil on scrapbook paper). A fun diversion. I also work on my colouring pages. 

After breakfast, we play Horseopoly. Wizard loses it before anyone except him has managed to have a turn, and retreats to the other room. We encourage Jack to play a decent game with us. I see him becoming restless 40 minutes into the game and call a halt. We add up our cash and the mortgage value of our properties and Brown Owl beats us both, hands down. 

I play a long bey blade tournament with Wizard. It’s going well, and I’m feeling good about my patience, when on the spur of the moment I launch from up high. Wizard doesn’t like this. He goes to his bed to be sad for a while, and when I start packing all the bey blades and launchers into the arena, he gets mad at me all over again. (There’s a fair bit of déjà vu during day 12.) 

We do a yoga session with Adriene that finishes so quicky we aren’t sure whether it’s because we have become stronger, or whether it was just a short session, so Brown Owl scrolls up and finds another. In total I think we do about 50 minutes of yoga. I’m connecting with my “core” in a way that never made sense to me way back when we did pilates. I’m still incredibly frustrated with the shortness of my limbs and the lumpiness of my breasts and belly, because in certain positions it is really hard to breathe. I can’t reach my hands to the ground on either side of my foot when I’m in a lunge position, which feels ridiculous. Grounding through my feet has really helped my balance. 

Brown Owl promises not to play savagely, so I agree on a couple of rounds of Song Birds. I explain to her after two rounds that it would be more fun for me, if we turned the berry tokens over at the end, rather than at the start, because then we wouldn’t know which row or column was adding up to fifteen or twelve (the birds with the most points in these rows or columns always win!) She looks at me quizzically, not getting it at all, and says “So then it’s completely about luck?” Oh well, one can but try. I like winning as much as others, but prefer to play for playing’s sake, rather than to overpower my opponents. 

Our third COVID tests come back, all negative. All clear for re-entering the world on Saturday morning. Hooray! 

I spend ages on the floor playing with Lego today. I manage to engage Jack for five minutes, requesting that he help me take some of the stuck on pieces off a base board. He manages this. I mentally pat myself on the back for finding a way of getting him to increase his finger muscle strength without triggering his “I hate making things” button. Everyone else is waiting for me to finish what I’m doing so Brown Owl and I can do PE with Joe and the others can go on the screens. I signal that need a bit of help with picking up the last pieces. Wizard happily joins me in pouring the tiny pieces into the boxes I’ve made. 

PE with Joe is strenuous today. My left calf twinges. I’m careful of my knees. He loves to make us do spiderman lunges and twisty turny things… I have enough alternative exercises in my repertoire now that I can substitute when necessary. Brown Owl and I laugh at the way we easily sustain jumping and running and shuffling for the full 30 seconds now. We couldn’t manage this a week and a half ago. Jack continues to refuse to join in with this. 

I feel kind of dreamy and withdrawn for part of the day, and find it difficult to engage with the boys. I’m not bothered by their antics and conflicts, feeling content to let them work it out for themselves. They throw balls, pillow fight, jump over the beds and wrestle to their heart’s content. Brown Owl, bless her, structures some exercises and ball games with them while I lounge on Wizard’s bed, playing Merge Dragons. 

We don’t watch our usual programs last night, because Wizard and Jack decide to watch Maleficent on the big screen in their bedroom. They both watched this movie at least once on one of the plane trips. 

Wiz puts the TV on in our room afterwards and finds a children’s restaurant show we’ve seen an episode of once upon a time. Brown Owl decides that since it was halfway over anyway, we might as well watch the rest, which segues into another show about a child learning to budget. Then the boys have showers, I make up all the beds all over again and we put them to bed. 

I read Pachinko into the night, stopping when I think I need to go to sleep. Sleep eludes me for several hours. I wish now that I’d just kept reading…