Mhh! I’m typing this single handed, I broke my left elbow. It’s not a big deal to some, but I’m a touch typist who needs 8 fingers to type and the thumbs for the space bar, shift and caps. It’s murder.
And backslabs are hell! That’s what the medical types call a half cast. It weighs a ton. A half cast is meant to keep me immobilised till I can be recast with the real thing. I'm immobilised all right. I need a crane to lift up my arm before the rest of me can follow.
I can't have coffee and speak on the phone at the same time, butter bread or chop up veggies for cooking, or eating, for that matter.
As the pain eases up, I intend to focus on positives and take on new challenges. This morning I made my own coffee and cooked porridge. I wedged the matches where they could be stable and lit the stove. Independence here I come.
This week, I got the boy to light the oven and I roasted chicken and veggies. I cleaned the stove and washed the dishes -all except the baking pan; it needs two hands and a bit of (excuse me) elbow grease. I finally got the hang of the sling.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tar Very Much
I can't remember what I called this article when I first wrote it in 2001, but 'Tar Very Much' is what The Big Issue called it when they published it in September of that year, so I'll stick to that till I remember what the original title was.
I'm hunting up all my old pieces and posting them as I have the time to do so. I'm giving the published a new lease on life and the unpublished a chance to shift out of the filing cabinet and on to the e-waves.
I’ve been hacking and hawking the foulest stuff, all shades and textures, from my lungs. They’re heaving a sigh of relief before getting down to the business of healing. But I’m not thinking about it too much, just focussing on the quitting part, working my way through cartons of gum and kilos of barley sugar. The jaws are getting tired but it’s important to keep them moving. It stops me from thinking about lighting up – just one more smoke, just one more time, for old times’ sake. Eight weeks on and I’m the original can’t-say-no girl, rejecting her favourite activity.
The upside is that I’ve saved myself at least 7000 inhalations so far – more if you consider that as a nervous smoker I’d take four puffs to other people’s one. And two days after I quit the cigs, I could run for the bus without wanting to collapse in agony at the driver’s feet.
My husband thinks it’s a definite downer that my husky pack-a-day hacker voice has gone but he’ll have to do without. What counts is that I can now sing ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’ to my granddaughter without scaring her too much.
I’d like to turn it into a virtue, say that I quit because of the graphic television ads, but the remote control can whisk you away from unpalatable truths in an instant. And it wasn’t the thought of saving heaps of money, either; addicts are only interested in the next fix. No, it’s about my waking one morning and finding both nicotine and oxygen jockeying for first place in my affections and the nicotine was winning hands down.
It’s a shame, because I’ve had a cig chopsticked in my fingers or dangling from my lower lip since I was 16 and there’s nothing like a smoke. From first puff to last gasp we’ve been pals, the cigs and I, sharing countless sunrises and sunsets. There’s nothing like the garden first thing in the morning; just the birds, the caffeine, a nicotine fix and me – spread out on a chaise lounge. I’ve tried a carrot stick as an after dinner stimulant but believe me, carotene and conversation loses something in the translation.
The party’s over, I said to my packet of Alpine ultras before tenderly tossing them into the council bin. But it hasn’t been an amicable separation. The cigs haven’t been good sports, and withdrawal isn’t a convenient bank transaction.
Once the pall of smoke had cleared, a generation’s worth of squatters were screaming for custody of the body the nicotine mafia tramped through my bloodstream in high heals, cha cha’d o my chest and reminded me who was boss. I’d just take deep breaths and say things like, ‘you’re fired, you’re history you bastards, give me my life back!’ I won the skirmish and they went off to regroup. Eight weeks later, their best effort is the occasional poke in the ribs, but I’ve learned to call out ‘nyah, nyah!’ and give the mafia the finger.
There’s a little more waddle in my gait now, but there’s going to be nothing more ominous than a piece of carrot cake and a scoop of low fat ice cream to deal with after this. And If I’m thinking of lapsing, JM Barry, Peter Pan’s literary dad and a fellow quitter is my role model. More than a hundred years ago, he said, ‘No blind beggar was more abjectly led by his dog, or more loath to cut the string.’ (My Lady Nicotine, 1890). Which only proves that there were the same sorts of idiots then as there are now.
We used to smoke behind the girls’ shelter shed. We were the smokers’ club, practising for the distant day we’d come out from behind the shed right onto street corners. We were bad, we were cool, now we’re just plain cold and old and wondering what price the piper is going to ask of us, wondering if we’ve left it too late.
The glory days of smokPing – on planes, trains and in hospital foyers – are dead. Long live the Surgeon General’s report and the ubiquitous anti-smoking lobby. They’ve turned a glamorous lifestyle into a filthy habit in less than three decades. There was an idea, then, whose time had come. And like all good ideas, once born into the world there’s no going back. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before we can all give Sir Walter Raleigh the finger and finally have some closure.
The upside is that I’ve saved myself at least 7000 inhalations so far – more if you consider that as a nervous smoker I’d take four puffs to other people’s one. And two days after I quit the cigs, I could run for the bus without wanting to collapse in agony at the driver’s feet.
My husband thinks it’s a definite downer that my husky pack-a-day hacker voice has gone but he’ll have to do without. What counts is that I can now sing ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’ to my granddaughter without scaring her too much.
I’d like to turn it into a virtue, say that I quit because of the graphic television ads, but the remote control can whisk you away from unpalatable truths in an instant. And it wasn’t the thought of saving heaps of money, either; addicts are only interested in the next fix. No, it’s about my waking one morning and finding both nicotine and oxygen jockeying for first place in my affections and the nicotine was winning hands down.
It’s a shame, because I’ve had a cig chopsticked in my fingers or dangling from my lower lip since I was 16 and there’s nothing like a smoke. From first puff to last gasp we’ve been pals, the cigs and I, sharing countless sunrises and sunsets. There’s nothing like the garden first thing in the morning; just the birds, the caffeine, a nicotine fix and me – spread out on a chaise lounge. I’ve tried a carrot stick as an after dinner stimulant but believe me, carotene and conversation loses something in the translation.
The party’s over, I said to my packet of Alpine ultras before tenderly tossing them into the council bin. But it hasn’t been an amicable separation. The cigs haven’t been good sports, and withdrawal isn’t a convenient bank transaction.
Once the pall of smoke had cleared, a generation’s worth of squatters were screaming for custody of the body the nicotine mafia tramped through my bloodstream in high heals, cha cha’d o my chest and reminded me who was boss. I’d just take deep breaths and say things like, ‘you’re fired, you’re history you bastards, give me my life back!’ I won the skirmish and they went off to regroup. Eight weeks later, their best effort is the occasional poke in the ribs, but I’ve learned to call out ‘nyah, nyah!’ and give the mafia the finger.
There’s a little more waddle in my gait now, but there’s going to be nothing more ominous than a piece of carrot cake and a scoop of low fat ice cream to deal with after this. And If I’m thinking of lapsing, JM Barry, Peter Pan’s literary dad and a fellow quitter is my role model. More than a hundred years ago, he said, ‘No blind beggar was more abjectly led by his dog, or more loath to cut the string.’ (My Lady Nicotine, 1890). Which only proves that there were the same sorts of idiots then as there are now.
We used to smoke behind the girls’ shelter shed. We were the smokers’ club, practising for the distant day we’d come out from behind the shed right onto street corners. We were bad, we were cool, now we’re just plain cold and old and wondering what price the piper is going to ask of us, wondering if we’ve left it too late.
The glory days of smokPing – on planes, trains and in hospital foyers – are dead. Long live the Surgeon General’s report and the ubiquitous anti-smoking lobby. They’ve turned a glamorous lifestyle into a filthy habit in less than three decades. There was an idea, then, whose time had come. And like all good ideas, once born into the world there’s no going back. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before we can all give Sir Walter Raleigh the finger and finally have some closure.
Pubished in The Big Issue, September - October 2001
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Orthopaedic Shoes and Lamingtons
I seem to have made a career of writing about my granddaughters. I'm trying to expand my literary horizons but here's a fourth post that should have been first. It's over seven years old and I wrote it about my very first grandchild, Dezeree. She made me what I am.
Six months ago, I had an inexplicable urge to dye my hair in pastel shades of pink, buy orthopaedic shoes and bake lamingtons. I don’t care for lamingtons, so I was relieved to discover that it was all about the birds and the bees; my son explained it to me when he phoned to tell me the news. I have notched up another credit to my long list of credentials: daughter, wife, mother, mother-in-law and now grandmother. I am a long distance Melbourne grandmother to a Sydney granddaughter: Dezeree, Jacqueline. This news was a preferable alternative to visions of jackets that tie n the back and nursing homes for the cerebrally distressed.
I rushed into the street and accosted two elderly ladies on their way to Bingo. The amused and bemused pair shook hands and gravely congratulated me. I tried to tell it to the golden Labrador crossing the road and narrowly missed being concussed by a Volvo. The grand aunts, the cousins, the grand uncle, the great grandma were thrilled, chuffed and overjoyed, but great grandfather was confused because he thought he was already great.
We had a heated debate about my title. I hadn’t realised there were so many ways to say mother of child of my child that were both exotic and familiar: Nanny, Nan, Granny, Gran, Nona, Grossmutte, and Savtah are just a few of the choices that I had. As mother to the mother of the child, the other granny has first dibs on a name; this is the protocol I’ve been told. She has chosen Anyu, a Hungarian title, which left the field open to me. But there were still weighty decisions to make. I could be dignified in pearls and twin-set or a homey milk and cookies gran. But pearls don’t do much for a five foot two inch dumpling and milk and cookies don’t travel well, so I’ve settled for nanna. It has style and doesn’t make me feel too old. Because a two and a half kilo morsel has brought my mortality home to me in a way that arthritic kneecaps and failing eyesight has failed to. I’ve learned to adjust to my slowly disintegrating body, by ignoring it. The secret to feeling twenty-one when you are fifty-something is to ignore Newton’s law of gravity, and the mirror. Now I find myself checking out sagging chins and crows’ feet. It’s all downhill and across the New South Wales border from here on in.
Geographic restrictions have also put me at a disadvantage. My geriatric friends knit and chuckle over Jamie’s reaction to the zoo, Celia’s introduction to the hairdresser and the joy of Brendan’s first trip to the potty. I talk about Dezzy’s sunset smile, her winning ways and her nappy rash, as told to me by my son. Then in an unguarded moment I whip out my portfolio of Dezzy photographs, courtesy of the Internet. Timing is the key to being a successful long-distance grandma.
The brag book and the wallet are passé. Dezzy’s face, her biography – such as it is – and her cackles can be found on (web) site. Her doting and besotted father has created one especially for his porky princess. Photos are printed and placed in a manila folder for each family member and every stranger’s delectation.
With apologies to Malcolm Fraser and Kermit the frog, it’s not easy being a long distance grandma. Dezeree’s there in Sydney and I’m here in Melbourne calculating how much luggage I will need in order to take that trip and how often I can get away. With luck I can time visits for her first tooth, her first word and her graduation, by which time the luggage will include a walking frame and an embarrassment of pharmaceuticals.
I need to cram in the maximum in auditory and tactile experiences, to replay when I get home. The first visit is for her naming: she lies quiescent, bedecked and beribboned in her mother’s arms. At home, Dezzy dozes, eats then sleeps some more.
The second trip is on fast-forward and Dezzy is much more interesting. She already smiles and chuckles. She rolls over on her stomach and I’m the first to see it. I feed her milk and mush, which she generously shares with my blouse, my pants and my forearm. It’s all coming back to me. And Dezzy speaks. She says, mmh, mmh and mwa mway – a highly articulate child.
She’s a tender little tidbit. Several older types (at least nine or ten months old) have put their names down for that first date just on the strength of her brown eyes and pouty mouth. But they’ll have her daddy to contend with. Her daddy plans to gently guide Dezzy through her puberty and teens. The tennis lessons, the swimming lessons, the art galleries and classical music have been pre-planned. The kinder, the school., the university have already been vetted. Dezzy’s pre and post-pubescent years have been efficiently programmed.
But I have the Melbourne bridegroom lined up.
Six months ago, I had an inexplicable urge to dye my hair in pastel shades of pink, buy orthopaedic shoes and bake lamingtons. I don’t care for lamingtons, so I was relieved to discover that it was all about the birds and the bees; my son explained it to me when he phoned to tell me the news. I have notched up another credit to my long list of credentials: daughter, wife, mother, mother-in-law and now grandmother. I am a long distance Melbourne grandmother to a Sydney granddaughter: Dezeree, Jacqueline. This news was a preferable alternative to visions of jackets that tie n the back and nursing homes for the cerebrally distressed.
I rushed into the street and accosted two elderly ladies on their way to Bingo. The amused and bemused pair shook hands and gravely congratulated me. I tried to tell it to the golden Labrador crossing the road and narrowly missed being concussed by a Volvo. The grand aunts, the cousins, the grand uncle, the great grandma were thrilled, chuffed and overjoyed, but great grandfather was confused because he thought he was already great.
We had a heated debate about my title. I hadn’t realised there were so many ways to say mother of child of my child that were both exotic and familiar: Nanny, Nan, Granny, Gran, Nona, Grossmutte, and Savtah are just a few of the choices that I had. As mother to the mother of the child, the other granny has first dibs on a name; this is the protocol I’ve been told. She has chosen Anyu, a Hungarian title, which left the field open to me. But there were still weighty decisions to make. I could be dignified in pearls and twin-set or a homey milk and cookies gran. But pearls don’t do much for a five foot two inch dumpling and milk and cookies don’t travel well, so I’ve settled for nanna. It has style and doesn’t make me feel too old. Because a two and a half kilo morsel has brought my mortality home to me in a way that arthritic kneecaps and failing eyesight has failed to. I’ve learned to adjust to my slowly disintegrating body, by ignoring it. The secret to feeling twenty-one when you are fifty-something is to ignore Newton’s law of gravity, and the mirror. Now I find myself checking out sagging chins and crows’ feet. It’s all downhill and across the New South Wales border from here on in.
Geographic restrictions have also put me at a disadvantage. My geriatric friends knit and chuckle over Jamie’s reaction to the zoo, Celia’s introduction to the hairdresser and the joy of Brendan’s first trip to the potty. I talk about Dezzy’s sunset smile, her winning ways and her nappy rash, as told to me by my son. Then in an unguarded moment I whip out my portfolio of Dezzy photographs, courtesy of the Internet. Timing is the key to being a successful long-distance grandma.
The brag book and the wallet are passé. Dezzy’s face, her biography – such as it is – and her cackles can be found on (web) site. Her doting and besotted father has created one especially for his porky princess. Photos are printed and placed in a manila folder for each family member and every stranger’s delectation.
With apologies to Malcolm Fraser and Kermit the frog, it’s not easy being a long distance grandma. Dezeree’s there in Sydney and I’m here in Melbourne calculating how much luggage I will need in order to take that trip and how often I can get away. With luck I can time visits for her first tooth, her first word and her graduation, by which time the luggage will include a walking frame and an embarrassment of pharmaceuticals.
I need to cram in the maximum in auditory and tactile experiences, to replay when I get home. The first visit is for her naming: she lies quiescent, bedecked and beribboned in her mother’s arms. At home, Dezzy dozes, eats then sleeps some more.
The second trip is on fast-forward and Dezzy is much more interesting. She already smiles and chuckles. She rolls over on her stomach and I’m the first to see it. I feed her milk and mush, which she generously shares with my blouse, my pants and my forearm. It’s all coming back to me. And Dezzy speaks. She says, mmh, mmh and mwa mway – a highly articulate child.
She’s a tender little tidbit. Several older types (at least nine or ten months old) have put their names down for that first date just on the strength of her brown eyes and pouty mouth. But they’ll have her daddy to contend with. Her daddy plans to gently guide Dezzy through her puberty and teens. The tennis lessons, the swimming lessons, the art galleries and classical music have been pre-planned. The kinder, the school., the university have already been vetted. Dezzy’s pre and post-pubescent years have been efficiently programmed.
But I have the Melbourne bridegroom lined up.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Close the Larder Door
My friend Trixie says that if you want to lose weight close the larder door and go for a walk. That’s a simple solution that has the ring of a complex truth about it; like that time an advertising campaign tried to convince us unreformed smokers that we were stronger than cigarettes. I couldn’t see it; whenever I tried to give up the cigs, the addictive drugs contaminating my bloodstream did a Cha Cha through my system in spiked heels. I did overcome the chemically induced pain in the end, but rage had a lot to do with it and zero tolerance. If only I could do the same with food, I’d be home and hosed. I say that with feeling because I’m the sort of person who lives to eat. Some people I know can get so absorbed in dinner party conversation that they can forget for minutes at a time that they’re holding a fork laden down with bits of lamb and roast potato. Not me. I’m not capable of keeping up an impersonal relationship with lamb and roast potatoes. Especially if there’s gravy involved.
When I quit the cigs there was a compulsive personality lurking in the wings, waiting to take their place. What that meant was that while my mouth was still constantly on the move, it was now munching, crunching and masticating. I would only have to think food to want it. To see a packet of chips was to finish it, down to the very last crisp. Then, if there were any crumbs left in the pack I’d chase after every one with the tip of my middle finger, before declaring myself all done. Like the good nineteen fifties child I used to be, I cleaned my plate; I still do, but I’m a lot more careful now about what I put on it. Nothing fried, if you’re interested; I steam or gently poach my meat and veggies now and I add herbs for punch, or a bit of white wine. I’ve discovered that my next best alternative to giving food up altogether is to be more creative about how I prepare it.
My heart goes out to young mums. Children can get in their way when it comes to sticking to a routine. There are the working mums bringing home the bacon, or working mums ordering in pizza, or mums who will come home from chauffeuring their kids to the thousand and one activities essential to personal growth. Once their kids are done they pick at the congealing mess of leftovers and wonder what they can have for dinner.
My granddaughters come to stay every term break. They eat fruit and they like salad but that’s where our taste buds part company. Dezzy and Rachel eat creamy mashed potatoes and don’t mind fish when it’s battered; they will tolerate chicken when it’s fried and both love getting stuck into what Rachel calls ‘bazanya’. If it’s food that will harden the arteries, my darlings are all for it. I did well that last visit because I gave myself permission to lapse without the guilt that goes with it. I accepted that it was human to be ‘bad’ and moved on. I eat my meals first, now, and I draw the line when it comes to leftovers. Tucking into unidentifiable goo doesn’t do much for your waist or your self-respect; I let my granddaughters clean their own plates.
The trouble is that we have too much on offer to tempt us these days. There are the supermarkets and delicatessens; there’s al fresco dining and boutique bakeries on every corner. Trixie is eighty plus; her influences and experiences are vastly different to ours. ‘We would close the larder door if we could, Trix,’ I’d say, ‘but there are much yummier things in it than when you were a girl;’ and our lifestyle is more complex. But she refuses to understand about us foodies.
Trixie and her contemporaries grew up within cooee of the Depression years and experienced World War II rations; we worship at the altar of nouvelle cuisine. They ate their meat and three veg without too much fanfare and discussed how 4 lamb chops could fit into five people; we have dedicated a whole TV channel to food and speak of nothing else. My heart does a bit of a tap dance when I see those chefs shovel quantities of salt and pour generous amounts of oil, cream or butter onto every dish as if there were no tomorrow and for those of us who are inspired to do the same there probably isn’t.
Our food is refined; and I don’t mean well bred. Science has found a way to suck all the nourishment out of a product, replace it with chemicals and food colouring, then pump some vitamins and minerals right back. There’s diet lite to confuse us, extra light, salt reduced, no added salt, virgin, extra virgin; it’s enough to make your head spin. The supermarket has brought the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker under the one roof. Convenience is the name of the game and trekking down the ever lengthening aisles is as close as we busy types will ever get to the daily workout.
Things are so stacked against us; what hope have we modern girls got? But some of us persist. If we can afford the fees we lug our exhausted bodies across to the gym fondly believing that we can make a regular feature of it. We might know that three brisk walks in the hand are worth more than a dozen diet books in the bush but can’t help preferring the quick fix of the glossy magazines that tell us in twenty-four point bold type that we can eat what we want and still lose ten kilos.
There’s this symbiotic relationship we have with the diet industry. It feeds off our unrealistic dreams of immediate success and we eagerly eat up its latest miracles on offer. Want to look like Oprah? Follow her diet or hire her chef. Want to have flat abs like the models who demonstrate it? Buy this machine or an upgraded version of the previous machine. We have a gym’s worth of gadgets at home. We believe in them in the same way we were once sure that the right underarm deodorant would do fabulous things for our social life. Every other day there’s a new guru to follow, a food replacement shake that will do the trick or an exercise machine that’s an improvement on the last one that we bought; but how many machines can we fit under the bed?
There’s no one diet fits all, that’s what I discovered for myself. But as Pandora won’t go back into her box I’ve learned to use her to my advantage. I’ve begun by accepting my flaws and limitations and working around them. I’ve dusted off a manual treadmill for the times I can’t go for a walk and have given the rest of the stuff away to needy friends. Like actress Kirsty Ally, I’m ‘a work in progress.’ I make my own cups of soup and TV dinners and freeze them against the day that my granddaughters will once again grace me with their presence. And I’ve cleared out my larder.
I’m a hard core compulsive who needs to overcome my psychological bent and I need to work out my addiction one day at a time. I don’t say that I’m stronger than the lamb roast, just that I’ve found a way to distance myself from the gravy.
When I quit the cigs there was a compulsive personality lurking in the wings, waiting to take their place. What that meant was that while my mouth was still constantly on the move, it was now munching, crunching and masticating. I would only have to think food to want it. To see a packet of chips was to finish it, down to the very last crisp. Then, if there were any crumbs left in the pack I’d chase after every one with the tip of my middle finger, before declaring myself all done. Like the good nineteen fifties child I used to be, I cleaned my plate; I still do, but I’m a lot more careful now about what I put on it. Nothing fried, if you’re interested; I steam or gently poach my meat and veggies now and I add herbs for punch, or a bit of white wine. I’ve discovered that my next best alternative to giving food up altogether is to be more creative about how I prepare it.
My heart goes out to young mums. Children can get in their way when it comes to sticking to a routine. There are the working mums bringing home the bacon, or working mums ordering in pizza, or mums who will come home from chauffeuring their kids to the thousand and one activities essential to personal growth. Once their kids are done they pick at the congealing mess of leftovers and wonder what they can have for dinner.
My granddaughters come to stay every term break. They eat fruit and they like salad but that’s where our taste buds part company. Dezzy and Rachel eat creamy mashed potatoes and don’t mind fish when it’s battered; they will tolerate chicken when it’s fried and both love getting stuck into what Rachel calls ‘bazanya’. If it’s food that will harden the arteries, my darlings are all for it. I did well that last visit because I gave myself permission to lapse without the guilt that goes with it. I accepted that it was human to be ‘bad’ and moved on. I eat my meals first, now, and I draw the line when it comes to leftovers. Tucking into unidentifiable goo doesn’t do much for your waist or your self-respect; I let my granddaughters clean their own plates.
The trouble is that we have too much on offer to tempt us these days. There are the supermarkets and delicatessens; there’s al fresco dining and boutique bakeries on every corner. Trixie is eighty plus; her influences and experiences are vastly different to ours. ‘We would close the larder door if we could, Trix,’ I’d say, ‘but there are much yummier things in it than when you were a girl;’ and our lifestyle is more complex. But she refuses to understand about us foodies.
Trixie and her contemporaries grew up within cooee of the Depression years and experienced World War II rations; we worship at the altar of nouvelle cuisine. They ate their meat and three veg without too much fanfare and discussed how 4 lamb chops could fit into five people; we have dedicated a whole TV channel to food and speak of nothing else. My heart does a bit of a tap dance when I see those chefs shovel quantities of salt and pour generous amounts of oil, cream or butter onto every dish as if there were no tomorrow and for those of us who are inspired to do the same there probably isn’t.
Our food is refined; and I don’t mean well bred. Science has found a way to suck all the nourishment out of a product, replace it with chemicals and food colouring, then pump some vitamins and minerals right back. There’s diet lite to confuse us, extra light, salt reduced, no added salt, virgin, extra virgin; it’s enough to make your head spin. The supermarket has brought the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker under the one roof. Convenience is the name of the game and trekking down the ever lengthening aisles is as close as we busy types will ever get to the daily workout.
Things are so stacked against us; what hope have we modern girls got? But some of us persist. If we can afford the fees we lug our exhausted bodies across to the gym fondly believing that we can make a regular feature of it. We might know that three brisk walks in the hand are worth more than a dozen diet books in the bush but can’t help preferring the quick fix of the glossy magazines that tell us in twenty-four point bold type that we can eat what we want and still lose ten kilos.
There’s this symbiotic relationship we have with the diet industry. It feeds off our unrealistic dreams of immediate success and we eagerly eat up its latest miracles on offer. Want to look like Oprah? Follow her diet or hire her chef. Want to have flat abs like the models who demonstrate it? Buy this machine or an upgraded version of the previous machine. We have a gym’s worth of gadgets at home. We believe in them in the same way we were once sure that the right underarm deodorant would do fabulous things for our social life. Every other day there’s a new guru to follow, a food replacement shake that will do the trick or an exercise machine that’s an improvement on the last one that we bought; but how many machines can we fit under the bed?
There’s no one diet fits all, that’s what I discovered for myself. But as Pandora won’t go back into her box I’ve learned to use her to my advantage. I’ve begun by accepting my flaws and limitations and working around them. I’ve dusted off a manual treadmill for the times I can’t go for a walk and have given the rest of the stuff away to needy friends. Like actress Kirsty Ally, I’m ‘a work in progress.’ I make my own cups of soup and TV dinners and freeze them against the day that my granddaughters will once again grace me with their presence. And I’ve cleared out my larder.
I’m a hard core compulsive who needs to overcome my psychological bent and I need to work out my addiction one day at a time. I don’t say that I’m stronger than the lamb roast, just that I’ve found a way to distance myself from the gravy.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Motherhood and the Mafia
Thirty odd years ago, some old fart collard me in the street and coochie cooed my toddler son and baby boy.
‘Enjoy them while you can, dear,’ she said. ‘They’re all grown up before you know it.’
If I’d had a decent braincell left that wasn’t sleep deprived, I would have responded with a tart, ‘Can’t come too soon for me, lady.’ Children who squealed like steam kettles in the night, did not jibe with my experience of other people’s well-fed, smiling children. No one had told me there’d be days like this, not until the stork had well and truly departed for more fertile fields.
By the time I was knee deep in nappies and ankle biters, it was clear to me that motherhood was like belonging to the Mafia. You can never ever leave it. It may leave you, in fact it usually does after a couple of decades, but you can never ditch that job description. Children give you sleepless nights, the terrible twos, and the importuning thirty-twos. Then they give you more sleepless nights, heartburn and a chance to give up your Saturday nights all over again. Marie Hartwell-Walker, an American psychologist says that ‘leaving home isn’t an event, it’s a process’ of them growing up and us letting go. She doesn’t know the half of it. What about us growing up when they let go?
We’ve done our duty. We’ve loved our children unconditionally, protected them in their innocence and taught them our values by example. If we’ve done a good job we have produced a marked improvement on the earlier model. If we’ve done a good job we’ve prepared them for life after us. But where do we go next?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I see that now. That woman was right. Before you can say Empty Nest Syndrome (ENS) you have a spare room or two to fill. I had a fantasy in those long ago days.
Like Audrey Hepburn in ‘My Fair Lady, all I wanted was ‘a room somewhere’. I wanted a child-free den of my very own; a rocking chair and an antique writing desk. I wanted a room lined with books where I could sit, read and like Audrey eat chocolates all day long. The thing about fantasies is that once you can have them they lose their potency. My whole house was a den, what I wanted post-ENS was a life of my very own.
But ENS found me unprepared. I’d been given the glad hand and a box of chocolates for work well done. I was free as a bird with nothing to do with my time. Free as a bird in its empty nest. We just love to borrow from avian analogies, but no self-respecting bird lets its children hang around for decades the way that we dumb humans do. The chicks get tossed out at what mum perceives the most appropriate moment has arrived then she gets on with life.
Go forth old woman and start afresh. That was my idea. Do a bit of no pain, no gain, braincell aerobics and take on a writing course. It was great. I enjoyed the stimulation of learning something that wasn’t child related and even contributed opinions to class discussions that didn’t begin with, ‘you’ll never guess what the children did yesterday,’ I only wish I’d done it earlier.
Childbirth was a lark, a breeze compared to pushing out of the child-rearing envelope after a couple of decades of rusting away in suburbia. I was a mature age student, rahh, rahh. My classmates had the confidence, I had the wrinkles. I had the advantage of life experience they had the benefit of time. Sounds equitable, but they could always get the life experience while time was running out for me.
If I’d had it to do again, I’d have prepared for the ENS two minutes after saying ‘I do.’
If I had it to do again, I’d do it now. Feminist author Gloria Steinem said: 'There is no such thing as integrating women equally into the economy as it exists.... Not until the men are as equal inside the house as women are outside it.’ With those words ringing in their ears women have trained up their sons so that you could reap the benefit. Take advantage. There are a growing number of men who are brilliant at ‘mothering’. You see them everywhere on the weekends, confidently feeding their toddlers babychinos, riding their helmeted brood through suburban streets and guiding their children’s reading material at the local library. Use your partner.
At around nine hundred dollars a diploma, TAFE courses are still affordable. Do the whole shebang in one go. Some of the tertiary institutions have child care centres tailored to cater to the mature age student. You and your children can simultaneously encounter the social and educational experience. Do a Uni subject to see how you like it. You’ve got two decades. By the time you’re free, you’ll have several degrees under your belt and a new career.
The Australian Institute of Family studies says that today’s grandmas are a great resource. We’ve had fewer children than the generation before us and have more time to spend with our grandchildren. For a CAE short course your best bet is your mother in law. (Same beast, different hat). She doesn’t ask for much, just a crumb or two from your table. Mothers in law were mothers once, before they fell into bad ways. You could do much to redeem the species and do yourself some good at the same time. Take up archeology explained in ten easy lessons or musical appreciation for the tone deaf. If the poor fool genuinely believes that fruit does not roll up and juice does not come out of a bottle, why disillusion her? If she wants to waste time pottering round the kitchen, let her. You might even find dinner cooked when you get home and the furniture polished. How much damage can she do in an hour or two a week, even if she is behind the child rearing times?
Take up bungee jumping, learn conversational French or the gentle art of flower arranging. Be a good role model for your children. They will thank you for it some day. Whatever you want to be when your children grow up, do whatever it takes so that middle age doesn’t find you wandering the streets with nothing better to do than to accost parents strolling innocently along the street with their children.
Published in a children's magazine 2006
‘Enjoy them while you can, dear,’ she said. ‘They’re all grown up before you know it.’
If I’d had a decent braincell left that wasn’t sleep deprived, I would have responded with a tart, ‘Can’t come too soon for me, lady.’ Children who squealed like steam kettles in the night, did not jibe with my experience of other people’s well-fed, smiling children. No one had told me there’d be days like this, not until the stork had well and truly departed for more fertile fields.
By the time I was knee deep in nappies and ankle biters, it was clear to me that motherhood was like belonging to the Mafia. You can never ever leave it. It may leave you, in fact it usually does after a couple of decades, but you can never ditch that job description. Children give you sleepless nights, the terrible twos, and the importuning thirty-twos. Then they give you more sleepless nights, heartburn and a chance to give up your Saturday nights all over again. Marie Hartwell-Walker, an American psychologist says that ‘leaving home isn’t an event, it’s a process’ of them growing up and us letting go. She doesn’t know the half of it. What about us growing up when they let go?
We’ve done our duty. We’ve loved our children unconditionally, protected them in their innocence and taught them our values by example. If we’ve done a good job we have produced a marked improvement on the earlier model. If we’ve done a good job we’ve prepared them for life after us. But where do we go next?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I see that now. That woman was right. Before you can say Empty Nest Syndrome (ENS) you have a spare room or two to fill. I had a fantasy in those long ago days.
Like Audrey Hepburn in ‘My Fair Lady, all I wanted was ‘a room somewhere’. I wanted a child-free den of my very own; a rocking chair and an antique writing desk. I wanted a room lined with books where I could sit, read and like Audrey eat chocolates all day long. The thing about fantasies is that once you can have them they lose their potency. My whole house was a den, what I wanted post-ENS was a life of my very own.
But ENS found me unprepared. I’d been given the glad hand and a box of chocolates for work well done. I was free as a bird with nothing to do with my time. Free as a bird in its empty nest. We just love to borrow from avian analogies, but no self-respecting bird lets its children hang around for decades the way that we dumb humans do. The chicks get tossed out at what mum perceives the most appropriate moment has arrived then she gets on with life.
Go forth old woman and start afresh. That was my idea. Do a bit of no pain, no gain, braincell aerobics and take on a writing course. It was great. I enjoyed the stimulation of learning something that wasn’t child related and even contributed opinions to class discussions that didn’t begin with, ‘you’ll never guess what the children did yesterday,’ I only wish I’d done it earlier.
Childbirth was a lark, a breeze compared to pushing out of the child-rearing envelope after a couple of decades of rusting away in suburbia. I was a mature age student, rahh, rahh. My classmates had the confidence, I had the wrinkles. I had the advantage of life experience they had the benefit of time. Sounds equitable, but they could always get the life experience while time was running out for me.
If I’d had it to do again, I’d have prepared for the ENS two minutes after saying ‘I do.’
If I had it to do again, I’d do it now. Feminist author Gloria Steinem said: 'There is no such thing as integrating women equally into the economy as it exists.... Not until the men are as equal inside the house as women are outside it.’ With those words ringing in their ears women have trained up their sons so that you could reap the benefit. Take advantage. There are a growing number of men who are brilliant at ‘mothering’. You see them everywhere on the weekends, confidently feeding their toddlers babychinos, riding their helmeted brood through suburban streets and guiding their children’s reading material at the local library. Use your partner.
At around nine hundred dollars a diploma, TAFE courses are still affordable. Do the whole shebang in one go. Some of the tertiary institutions have child care centres tailored to cater to the mature age student. You and your children can simultaneously encounter the social and educational experience. Do a Uni subject to see how you like it. You’ve got two decades. By the time you’re free, you’ll have several degrees under your belt and a new career.
The Australian Institute of Family studies says that today’s grandmas are a great resource. We’ve had fewer children than the generation before us and have more time to spend with our grandchildren. For a CAE short course your best bet is your mother in law. (Same beast, different hat). She doesn’t ask for much, just a crumb or two from your table. Mothers in law were mothers once, before they fell into bad ways. You could do much to redeem the species and do yourself some good at the same time. Take up archeology explained in ten easy lessons or musical appreciation for the tone deaf. If the poor fool genuinely believes that fruit does not roll up and juice does not come out of a bottle, why disillusion her? If she wants to waste time pottering round the kitchen, let her. You might even find dinner cooked when you get home and the furniture polished. How much damage can she do in an hour or two a week, even if she is behind the child rearing times?
Take up bungee jumping, learn conversational French or the gentle art of flower arranging. Be a good role model for your children. They will thank you for it some day. Whatever you want to be when your children grow up, do whatever it takes so that middle age doesn’t find you wandering the streets with nothing better to do than to accost parents strolling innocently along the street with their children.
Published in a children's magazine 2006
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