extrapolations of existential irrelevance

Extrapolations of existential irrelevance

It starts small, like remembering when I did something badly, or when I didn’t do something I maybe should have. Sometimes it’s envy, when someone I do everything for shows love and appreciation to someone else when I feel I deserved it more. When I’m physically unwell it makes sense to reject my unwieldy, clumsy body as faulty, inept, incapable of functioning. It’s always an emotional shame-based trigger into the rabbit hole where rationality warps and tears and I fall further and further from light. The thoughts just wrap round and round my brain and my body, imprisoning me in a web of deceit until it’s all I can do to push on past it, relegate the whole sorry mess of me into a crawl-space under the bed or behind the door while I get on with what I need to be doing. Because there’s always something I need to be doing for someone – a child, an employer, a landlord, an animal, a friend, a neighbour, a plant … those are what keep me from fading irrevocably into the oblivion that yawns in my wake if ever I slip and cast a sideways glance. The ribbons of self-hatred unravel any inkling of self-worth I have managed not to reject. And this runs deep, so deep, until all that makes sense is to make a plan to end the torment. Two days ago, this was my plan: see out my lease, do right by my landlord, get my affairs in order, rehome the animals, quietly divest myself of all my worldly possessions, by donating what is of use to those who might use it, and making use of the waste collection and recycling services to gradually empty my house, organize for the equal distribution of my pathetic financial accretions to my four children after paying off all my debts, walk away quietly and sink, Virginia Woolf-like under the waves someplace, allowing my bones to be tumbled until they are opalescent like those of the plesiosaur in the museum. Obviously, one takes nothing when one goes. Obviously, I am nothing to write home about. Obviously, there is no hope of redemption. It’s not about the imputed impact on anybody else. It’s about taking myself away and out of the picture because I add nothing to the composition and removing myself from it will have little impact, if any at all. I feel as though I’m not really in the picture anyway. The small ripples my departure might cause are trifling. I will not be remembered for anything I would want to be remembered for. Better to be altogether forgotten. Existentially irrelevant.

Accommodations #2

Accommodations #2 (12/10/2022) 

I can write this safely, secure in the knowledge that 

My mother will never read it. 

Much as I yearn for her sympathy and understanding 

She lacks capacity to relate, help, or understand me. 

I am more fearful of having to deal with

The repercussions of her misinterpretation. 

My mother prefers to deal in the lies and distortions of hearsay 

Manipulated by the speaker, further twisted by the hearer. 

She accuses me of using written words as weapons of cleverness 

Of playing them to my advantage against those who can but speak 

And feel reduced and vulnerable therefore, when faced with 

The onslaught of my written words. 

Accommodations have never been made for me. 

I have always been selectively mute. 

Another convenient fact about my life 

That nobody noticed. 

Nevertheless 

My poetry is not something you can twist into the shape of a gun. 

I reject this notion out of hand! 

My written words do not represent pieces of shrapnel 

Directed at those who try endlessly to erase me. 

My written words 

Are simply my voice 

Of self-expression. 

I am allowed to use my voice to express my life 

Even if it makes you uncomfortable. 

My written words hold power, yes 

But they cannot kill you 

Like the bullets in a gun 

My written words don’t even have 

The volition to silence you or shut you down. 

When you stop feeling threatened by my written words 

The distortion becomes obvious 

The lies unravel
Truth is exposed. 

I only wish to exert my rights 

For my voice to be acknowledged 

To be cherished loved blessed alive. 

Accommodations #1

 Accommodations #1

(16 September 2022)

2022       The classic situation, an aisle seat next to an overflowing man, on a sardine tin flight from Sydney to Adelaide after 36 hours in transit, finally exhausts my reserves. I sit tense, irritated, beyond tired, waiting to disembark. Does my discomfort show itself to anyone at all? I doubt it. I remain polite.

The days afterwards are a struggle. I walk into a tidy house, but for no apparent reason, every towel I own is in the washing basket. All I want is a hot shower and bed. I have brought home a suitcase of unwashed clothing and get out of bed intermittently throughout that first, long night to unload, reload and, on occasion, rebalance the washing machine. The next day one of my kids glomms himself onto me ahead of schedule and refuses to leave my side. The other rejoins our household, along with the dog, the following day. It is a full week before I have any time to myself. Two days of appointments, two days of work, then I opt to host a family meal at my place, rather than deal with the possibility of conflict arising so soon after my reappearance, should one of the children refuse to go elsewhere to be fed. Every night I fall desperately asleep whilst attempting to read to my children, resurfacing groggily to haul myself into my own bed, only to be repeatedly disturbed shortly thereafter by the child who is so happy that I came back, that he just can’t leave me alone, even to sleep. At 02:00 every morning my body wakes up with a zing! Sleep eludes me for hours. But I slip back into my role without fuss. Older mother, marriage wrecker, home maker, relief teacher, good daughter … This fatigue, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, is my normal state of being.

My arrival home coincides with the jasmine blooming. That heady fragrance heralds dangerous memories of myself, a very young woman, cautiously navigating my first serious friendship as I tip-toe into adulthood. I’ve been accessing those memories lately, trying to figure out how I slipped up, way back then. I have been baffled by how I so spectacularly stepped out of my role as the good daughter (albeit lost child) with the world at her feet and into another.

1987        I was determined this friendship would never be a romantic liaison. I did not want a boyfriend. I did not want a lover. I told everyone I was never going to marry, never going to have children. I planned to go back to Europe, explore my roots. All I wanted was a little flat filled with books, houseplants and my two cats where I could write and create and study and meet the world entirely as I saw fit, finally on my terms, and no one else’s.

My experience until then had been to try and appear normal. I knew very well I wasn’t normal, but I did my damndest to pass. This is called masking. It made me vulnerable precisely because instead of self-discovery, I always aimed to replicate and perform whatever others seemed to expect of me.

2022        When I meet my uncle in Texas, 37 years after spending time in his home in 1985 aged 15, he remembers me as a teenager who never said a word. He tells me he likes me much better now that I talk. His claim not to have known that I was in Texas with my folks in 1979, for six months, demonstrates how invisible I made myself. Invisibility is a shield almost as effective as shapeshifting, when you know you just can’t fit in.

For years we had a Peanuts cartoon on our fridge at home, depicting Peppermint Patty just standing there inside the frame, while Marcie declares “You’re weird, Sir.” That was me. I owned that notoriety and enjoyed the feeling of belonging I got whenever my parents said affectionately to me, “You’re weird, Sir!” So long as I stayed with the bounds they set for me, they accepted me as the person I presented to them.

1988        I see myself now, earnestly digging myself into a shallow trench. Yes, a tight fit. No, it doesn’t hurt, not much, anyway. I can cope. Always reaching blindly, accommodating myself to the demands of others. Does it hurt? I would ask myself. Really? Is it that important? Do I stick out? Is it that difficult? Am I not strong enough, kind enough, big enough, understanding enough, to manage, despite my distaste and misgivings? I was raised to not be selfish, to put others before myself. Is he really asking too much of me?

This is never a process of negotiated consent. Consent is never sought. Conquest is assumed. I see my role as choosing how to respond to what morphs from an unwanted, unsought, unimagined idea, into inevitability. Somehow, choosing how to respond becomes my only power. Do I stand helpless in the headlight glare? His demands creep up on me all unawares. I am so naiive. There are many moments of acute, mortifying embarrassment. I could list them all now. The feeling of humiliation resonates still within me. It hurts. These days, when my performance falls short and I am exposed as less than normal, less than perfect, my whole body is thrown into acute physical pain.

As usual, other people seem to know me better than I know myself. I grapple with who I am being made to be and transform myself into that person. In this process I lose focus on my authentic, true self. She lies discarded, bleeding out quietly in that shallow trench.

What tenuous boundaries I had formed by that stage, were malleable and permeable. I allowed others to shift my boundaries incrementally to suit themselves. I struggled to accommodate, never gaining enough traction or perspective to realise what was happening to me, never quite making it back up to the surface to gasp untainted air.

1989        Before I know it, my circumstances change drastically. Within a few months my life as good daughter, university student, peace activist, writer, sister, friend, traveller, is torn out from under me. I shapeshift to survive, transition rapidly into girlfriend, wife and mother, so estranged from my previous life and people that I no longer trust which way is up. I am pulled out by the roots. I sever ties willy-nilly, trying to avoid dragging others down with me. It takes years for my people to find me again. Rejected, discarded, worthless, defeated, yet I have to somehow measure up to my responsibilities.

My father tells me – I made my bed, and now must lie upon it. My mother tells me – actions speak louder than words. Take a reality check. It doesn’t matter whether I have chosen my path or just gone along with what had happened to me. I don’t count. Did I ever? Only my actions matter, especially now that the survival of others depends entirely on those actions. And no, I am not to expect any help with babysitting.   

Access to resources is entirely dependent on my erstwhile “Friend”, who rapidly devolves into a selfish, self-serving bully, intent on blaming me for the inconvenience of having a wife and children, and at the same time, intent on crushing me, using me in any way he could, to achieve what he thinks he deserves.  

This is an old story. Its interest to me now lies in recognizing the steps I took to adapt, learn my new roles, acquire the working knowledge I needed to raise my children and eventually release us from that sticky situation. I don’t know that I ever came back to myself – I just keep treading water until I can’t any longer.

If I weep now, it’s not so much regret for what might have been, but rather a retriggering of pain and confusion that I have never dealt with. It seems that this accretion of pain and confusion forms my only means of defense today; a sorry excuse for boundaries. The ongoing effects of my lack of boundaries continues to profoundly impact every relationship I have.

There is so much work to be done. I think I glimpse the shape of myself now, buried in that shallow trench under so many layers of accumulated filth. When I finally dig her up, clutch her to my bosom, will I know me anymore? Will she accept me for who I have become, the terrible mistakes I’ve made, the paths I’ve forged?  

2022       I fly out of Adelaide in a window seat. I feel empty, bereft, uncertain about leaving my children, even less certain about meeting my adult children on their terms. Will I fit? Is there a place for me? Do they really want me to play a role in their lives? I feel like such a fraud, such a failure. How can I expect them to understand? All I have to go on is my hard-won self-knowledge that I play a set of roles. I mask my true self. Do they know me at all? Am I a failure to them? If they do not know me for who I have become, how can they love me? How can I pretend to play mother of the bride? This role is new to me. Mother-in-law? It’s ludicrous. It feels so risky. I feel so flimsy, unreal.

I watch the world recede and shrink before my very eyes as we ascend. Who am I, away from my allotted roles? I foresee the need to similarly shrink myself to size, to not get in the way, to be accommodating. And with that, I feel the familiar inward-pulling tug of the precious kernel of self, gird my locked ribs tightly around the hollow of my heart, breathe deeply and intuit how to participate on this journey, as a lone white overweight middle-aged woman on an intercontinental flight.

Anonymity grates, but invisibility continues to surprise me. When the flight attendants interrupt me three times with special gluten free meals I feel obliged to eat them, even as the young man with the window seat across from me (I am in the aisle again) politely refuses anything but water. Here’s the thing – I’m not really hungry, I don’t want to use the airplane toilets, but the fact that the airline has prepared these meals for me means I feel I need to eat them and appreciate them. Besides which my residual childhood memory associates airplane food with good times.

During my eight flights there and back, no one inquires or shows any interest in me. I sit back, or lean forward, playing uncomfortable elbow-tag with the armrests, doze, watch movies, and engage with no one. It’s not to say I don’t use my acquired life-skills to try and connect. I do. I initiate conversation on the flight from LAX to Philadelphia with the young man beside me and the woman next to him, with a cat in a carrier. It’s a fizzer. (You’re weird, Sir.”) When the flight from LAX to Sydney finally departs close to midnight, and it becomes clear that the seat between me and the young Filipino man will remain empty, I initiate a high five with him. It’s embarrassing. (You’re weird, Sir.)

Maybe people these pandemic days invest less in connecting with strangers. Or maybe it’s the way I present that puts them off. Yes, I suspect it has to do with my inadvertently stepping beyond the bounds of my role as overweight middle-aged white woman.

My heart literally hurts when I leave Philadelphia. Tears course down my cheeks. No matter how I try, I cannot stem the flow. But I have to go. I’m expected elsewhere, and after that I have to return to my life, to the bed I must lie upon. My one consolation is the knowledge, the truth that I did meet my adult children unmasked, raw, joyous and bereft all at once, and was embraced.

I have nothing left to lose

Four months of life

*spoiler alerts* Maid (Warner Brothers) 

18 April 2022 

I started watching MAID yesterday and it hasn’t made me cry yet. I watch Alex as she hurtles from crisis to crisis, leaping over puddles that inconvenience her relentless pursuit of survival. She can’t even think about thriving in a world that fails to acknowledge her worth as a human being. 

When Danielle tries to push Alex into tapping into anger, the dull rage that swirls endlessly inside Alex barely ripples. I resonate with that. Anger takes such a lot of energy that is better put towards knocking down another obstacle she never sees looming on the horizon. 

Other people’s houses, other people’s children – totally I get how in the maelstrom of mother’s hand to child’s mouth, one’s sense of efficacy and connection becomes warped. Alex writes that it is hard not to want other people’s things. Yes, and it is hard not to want other people’s lives. 

* * * 

When I worked as a checkout operator in Coles, I was still living with my parents and still studying. But my memory clearly conjures up the precise distance I perceived, between the products whose purchase I facilitated for other people, and my own lack of access to these products for my personal benefit. Stock-take took place regularly in those days, always after the store had closed at midday on Saturday. It had been impressed upon me so firmly, during my orientation to my job, that if I were caught even involuntarily eating from a packet of something that someone else had left open but unpurchased on a shelf, I would be summarily charged with theft and lose my job. This warning was given to every new employee, but I became so frightened at this prospect, that I couldn’t even see myself making a legal purchase of nuts or sweets or chips or yoghurt, lest I inadvertently jeopardize my reputation and employment. 

I mean, this hurts. I might have buried my anger too deep to let it burn me on the surface, but I have access to several layers of pain. There’s the dull and constant pain of blood pumping through my veins, marking in time, my dissociation from the reality of my connection with the children I bore and the children I raise. There’s the sharp and acute pain that strikes whenever I am confronted by someone else’s reality, which, after piercing through my armour and wounding me in the gut, subsequently deprives me of something I had thought was certain and real. There’s the irritation that buzzes my consciousness, drawing a cross-hatched pattern across my senses in these days when matter shifts about almost at random, unbalancing my centre, rendering everything in disorienting shades of perpetual uncertainty. There’s the pain that throbs down deep, threading through my very marrow with reminders that I am responsible, I am culpable, never innocent of blame, especially when it is unfairly projected upon my person. Intention is irrelevant in indeterminate circumstances that shape my actions and impel me towards repair, covering the breach, mending relations, smoothing the way for others. I picture myself grovelling, lying face down in a mud puddle, trying in vain to flatten my big behind, cease my fidgeting, to make the passage less perilous for the stream of entitled mendicants lined up along the path awaiting their chance to tread upon me in their pursuit of whatever it is they believe they have a right. 

* * * 

No one ever bothers to ask Alex what Alex needs or wants. Alex has no time to think about what Alex needs or wants. Alex runs fast. Alex is snared so securely in survival mode that Alex only responds to two things: whatever shadows her and whatever shoves itself into her face. 

It’s a story so banal, so familiar, so mundane as to parallel documentaries of natural history, focusing rather than on some animal species, on a young female human’s life journey of inter- and intragenerational trauma. 

Alex is abused, just as her mother is abused, and quite possibly her mother before. Alex is aware of the damage her own daughter incurs. Alex chose not to have an abortion. Alex chose to bear this child despite the stated wishes of her child’s father. Trapped, Alex comprehends the horrible truth that although she herself has no value in the world, and although her own daughter will likely turn out despite her bestest efforts, to grow up in a world of abuse and struggle, Alex is nonetheless responsible for her daughter’s life. 

Alex is now held accountable by everyone, for each of her daughter’s failures and successes. This is drummed into her not only by the government agencies which insist that by fleeing an abusive partner, Alex is to blame for destabilizing her daughter’s world, but by her experience in which she is blamed, held responsible and made to jump through arbitrary hoops for absolutely everything she needs to survive. 

Her survival is begrudged by government regulation. Her survival is begrudged by her mother and father, who see Alex only for what they and their grandchild require of her. They take what she is unwilling to give. 

No one ever says thank you, or sorry to Alex. 

Alex’s existence is begrudged by Sean, the young man who took control of her, by his family and community, who all abuse Alex in turn. Alex is a nuisance. She is an eyesore. Alex and her selfishness spoiled Sean’s chances of making it in this world. She has saddled him with their child. Sean’s addictions, selfishness and violence are thrown inconveniently into lurid technicolour view, but only Alex notices. It is unbelievable that no one else can acknowledge what is going on. 

The trajectory is clear. When full-time parenting, which is what Alex wants and needs to go on doing, becomes inconvenient to Sean’s lifestyle, he graciously allows Alex to claw her way back into active mothering of their daughter. Alex has no choice then, but to be grateful to him, because she has no other purpose in life than to protect her precious daughter. 

* * * 

Resisting the urge to place a permanent end to the cycle of abuse takes an inner strength that musters itself only incrementally. A few steps forward and a few steps back, in a slow dance to somewhere. The strength might always lie there there somewhere inside, sluggishly lumpy, dormant, and stubbornly ignored, even as it forces one to go ahead and take another breath, despite one’s every intention to not. 

Watching MAID doesn’t make me cry. It puts me back in touch with the rage that smoulders endlessly, consuming in brightly-coloured, frantic flames, my bruised, misshapen fifty-two-year-old heart. I am angry about the choices I have had to take. I have never been privileged with a smorgasbord of options to suit my tastes. Until I was diagnosed with coeliac disease, rendering my food choices public, I was never invited to consider my tastes in anything. My choices have always been binary – life or death? him or her? this or that? now or then? here or there? yes or no? I am governed too, by the toxic silence of a family bound together by secrets and lies, as well as social conditioning that tells me I must consider the comfort of every other person before my own. 

When faced most recently with the choice of whether to go on living, I weighed up carefully the cost to others, of killing myself versus ending my relationship. I concluded that by inconveniencing, yes even hurting Brown Owl and disrupting her serene and fruitful life, I could allow myself to go on living, for the benefit of my adult children, my young children, my ageing parents, my siblings, niblings, pets, and friends. 

And so I gathered up my possessions and I left, to start living again. 

I could not project myself into the future she has forced upon me. Like the pain of childbirth which recedes behind a smokescreen of responding to a baby’s immediate needs, my mind forgot to remember the consequences I would bear, for choosing life. I have forged an unavoidable, deeply furrowed path, fraught with potholes and ditches that ambush almost every step I am forced to take. I must face up to the consequences of my actions without the comfort of knowing that my choice was false, made not on my behalf so much as in an attempt not to hurt and disrupt too many of the lives of all those others who are connected to me. I know I have caused disturbances in the accepted narratives of many people in my life. I know that my wishes don’t matter nearly as much as my actions. 

Which brings me back to Alex, who cleans other people’s houses, just as I cleaned other people’s houses, and just as I cared for other people’s children. I am conscientious, hardworking, intuitive, and bold, when it comes to other people’s houses, and other people’s children. 

I struggle to maintain the boundaries necessary for personal safety, between myself and other people’s children. This is the curious thing. Are Wizard and Jack my children? No one says they are not, and most people seem to think I am mostly responsible for keeping them safe and healthy. Their daddies stopped talking to me for two months because I chose to go on living. I keep encountering Organisations and Institutions that require proof of my relationship to them, because of course I have no legal legs to stand on in this Brave New World of non-biological parenting, where the accountability reaches only in one direction, from my spirit to theirs. 

The impediment that repeatedly breaks my heart is this armour I have built around me; my attempt to go on surviving without being impacted by the incessant assaults upon my invisible integrity. My survival depends upon my self-protection which stops me from soul connection. 

There are years of my life in which I don’t even know who I am anymore. Who is this “I” that survives? Who is this “I” in connection with anybody else? If I don’t know who I am, how can I possibly know what my children need from me? How could I ever do less than my best for them? 

The paradox of continuing to live without purpose or recognition of what I have endured pushes my every button, impelling me towards self-extinction. I focus instead on the external, knowing full well that one day I will have to face the discordant music that permeates and punctuates my inner turmoil. It will be waiting if ever I find myself at liberty to take it apart at last and reassemble all the layers of my world to suit me. 

* * * 

19 April 2022 

The second part of MAID made me cry, nearly all the way through. I had been warned of this possibility by a friend, also a survivor of emotional abuse. 

When Alex returns to Sean, having exhausted her options – neither of her parents can help her; the man who offered to help won’t stop making sexual advances towards her; everything that hinged upon her accommodation, such as daycare for her little girl, and employment on the island, is torn away because of Sean’s inappropriate and addicted behaviour at a birthday party – it’s not long before the cycle of abuse turns once more from sweet honeymoon to poisonous exertion of control. 

Alex watches and experiences all this from a distance, still holding on to her self-belief, and reaching out wistfully towards the future she desires, while clearly and consistently signalling to Sean that she has returned to him on her own terms, terms which he refuses to heed, or even hear. 

Sean has literally imprisoned her. He steals her car, won’t pay for her phone credit, makes it impossible for her to work, threatens her physically, speaks to her with cruelty, buys alcohol instead of food, and the list goes on. 

And then, after another violent attack upon her, Alex walks away from Sean’s trailer, carrying their daughter and nothing else. Fortunately for Alex, the DV shelter readmits her, and supports her to regain a sense of self and purpose. 

When Alex, after multiple struggles, ultimately triumphs, my tears fall once again. This time self-pity has set in. I remind myself that it’s really only been four months, since I chose life. I have done quite a lot in those four months. 

When Brown Owl ensnared me, thirteen years ago, I had been fifteen years single. I had raised my children up, brought them and myself through education, gained a qualification and a decent, steady wage, and had even scored secure public housing that I intended to stay in, for life. I had, at that time, enough self-respect to have placed boundaries between myself and my parents. I was devoting energy and time to creative pursuits that had for so long been reduced to dabbling on the edges whenever the need to create bled too much through the fabric of the things I needed to do to survive. My activism remained a core value and a driver for frequent activity. 

Today, I sit shame-bound and crippled by the lingering doubts about how I traded my freedom for a sequestered life of middle-class middle-aged privilege, I wallow and writhe and wonder how much time I really have left. I calculate the cost to myself and my four children. The knowledge that I abandoned Guitar Hero and LabCat on the cusps of their adulthood is something I live with, and I cannot undo. 

Emotional abuse is so slippery and elusive to define. It happens all the time, that I switch from myself to herself. It’s so easy to take the blame, to be the fall guy, the one with the issues. Because I am the one with the issues. I am the one at the top of the seesaw, scared to fall on my head, wishing and hoping with all my might that she will let me down gently, while knowing full well I am in for punishment. I deserve all she dishes out, due to my temerity in calling out her behaviour and attitude. 

I choose life. She feels humiliated. 

I feel used. She feels accused. 

I feel abused. She feels gracious. 

I feel ashamed. She feels self-righteous. 

I feel worthless. 

The only reason I feel at all is because I choose life over death. 

My covid quarantine output, though not prodigious, is still quite high: a clean house, repaired bed clothes, weighted animals, numerous items of mended clothing, half a jumper knitted, 15 job applications, long and frank conversations with three friends, one hand- painted piece of furniture an online inteand 3000 words. My boys will return to me tomorrow, and I am looking forward to spending a few days with them. The last four months have brought me to this place. I have housing, I have an income, I have resources, I have friends who actively love and care for me. 

year, my Jerusalem.

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.