The Bribe

A child tugged at her mother harnessing all the strength available to her 2 ½ year old body. This droopy diapered tyrant had quite a grip on the mum’s index finger and a look in her eyes that did not bode well for the future. She was determined to have it all her way and her mother was equally determined to show her that there was somebody else to consider here. For some of us waiting for our tram to arrive, watching the two personalities at loggerheads was a mix of entertainment tinged with remembrance and empathy. Been there, done that was the misty eyed consensus.

This wasn’t a David and Goliath story we were watching; the tiny tot hadn’t a chance. But while the end result was predictable, at least for the next handful of years, it was the way her mother dealt with the situation that made it interesting to watch.
It was a stop and start affair and the mum held out as long as she could. Now and again she bent and whispered something in the little girl’s ear, but when it seemed obvious that her strategies weren’t working, the mum reached into her carryall and brought out the biscuit of last resort. The girl took it and the mum lifted the distracted tot up and trotted off into the distance.

I leaned back and reminisced about the good old days of high ideals. It hadn’t taken long for them to take a battering. I had come to realise that a good mother was code word for managing to get through my day without too many blunders and that it was only possible if I had a good baby, code word for placid and sleeps a lot. As my children weren’t good children, I did what we all do when we have that epiphany, I adjusted my standards. It was the first of many times for me.

Having long believed that a tiny morsel couldn’t possibly cause me too much trouble, when my child finally arrived I was forced to face reality. My life was not going to be business as usual. I could no longer drop everything and go haring off on some jaunt at a moment’s notice and cooking was no longer well thought out three course meals but a repertoire of quick and easy recipes. Keeping house, a high maintenance job that required constant mopping and dusting left no room for playing, so until they started four year old kinder, I forced myself to spend a minimum amount of time cleaning (not really a chore) and dedicated the majority of my time playing get to know you with my children.

When it came to the biscuit of last resort, or in my case the chocolate frog of last resort, I preferred small distractions, code word for bribes, to a tap on the bottom. Until my children were old enough to be impressed with the I-will-brook-no-disagreement tone of voice that was the line I took. Not that I stopped reasoning, but like that mum I used a mix of persuasion knowing that sooner or later my exhortations would take hold and the occasional chocolate frog.

I can live with that sort of bribe but I don’t believe everything has a price. I think that paying children to help out for example is wrong. Some people say it teaches children responsibility but I think it smells more like blackmail (you won’t get that dollar if you don’t clean your room) than a lesson. I think the lesson learned should be that mutual expectations and obligations are expected on both sides.

I recently offered my two year old grandson with a chocolate button. He snapped it up and asked for more. I was caring for him and Eden was crying for his mum. The chocolate did its job. It worked so well that the first thing out of those rosebud lips whenever we met was chocolate. I adjusted my standards yet again. Now Eden gets a dose of The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher and sometimes we watch The Wiggles. It’s a personal preference, but I have found that I would rather be known as ‘nanna wiggles’, than ‘nanna chocolate’.

If I had a dollar

If I had had the foresight to save a dollar for every time somebody asked me how I was, well you know how the rest of that goes. Having absolutely no foresight, I just kept on keeping on with the traditional responses without giving them a second thought (and I’m broke).

It’s touching how every single soul I meet wants to know about my health; the butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker and even the stranger on the street asking directions is interested in my well-being. I’ll admit there was a bit of a lull when I broke my arm two years ago. People didn’t seem to be asking me how I feel as often as they used to, especially after the second or third time. But my arm is healed now, thank goodness and I’m back on track.

Telemarketers want to know how I feel. They call to congratulate me on being chosen for a chance to win a house. To be in the running I only need to attend a short seminar and listen to experts discuss how I can build up my wealth. It doesn’t seem to put them off when I tell them thanks but I’m not interested because I am already so independently wealthy. When I suggest they could offer their services to the needy, they try to convince me that I could never have enough and that as Michael Douglas once said,’ greed is good’. They sound so sincerely interested in my welfare that it’s with regret that I hang up.

My doctor always asks me how I am at the beginning of our sessions together. She’s warm and caring and there’s no doubt that she really wants to know, but she also knows that I tend to overdo it so she times me.

I don’t want you to think I have a monopoly on compassion. I listen to talk-back radio and no matter what the program or the host’s constant response is, to that question, each caller is anxious to hear the answer for himself or herself.

The French say comment ca va? the Italians ask come sta? I seem to have stumbled on the secret to world harmony if we could only harness it, and to a universal empathy that has spanned the globe and all cultures. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a wonderful world.

Idle hands

I used to knit. Yards and yards of yarn. No begging rello that came to my door was ever knocked back; my children, other people’s children, nieces, nephews, all got a garment each winter. As a mum raising two boisterous boys, I didn’t mind so much, I had plenty of time on my hands. And as little old ladies were always reminding us, ‘the Devil finds work for idle hands’. Wool was cheaper then and apart from the satisfaction of creating something original it was a more practical option to make your own than to buy a more expensive mass produced, machine made garment.

I loved to drop in to my local wool shop and speak to the old dears behind the counter. (They’re probably the ones who coined that term about the Devil and idle hands.) They could always answer questions about flat seams and cables and how to change colours when doing an Aran knit. Then I’d browse through pattern books, feast on the colours and feel the textures.

The little old ladies have all gone to God now, as have most of the shops and there’s no one there to have crafty chats with. Most of the shops that are left have gone on line. They probably feel that it is much cheaper to put together a website. I can’t blame them, not enough off the street customers to pay for the rent. Can you imagine how useless that is to somebody like me? I mean, knitting is a hands-on occupation for us serious knitters. So is choosing your materials. I feel the same about the E-reader, but that’s another story.

The trouble is that we are a throwaway society. There’s no point spending hours on creating something when it’s likely to last as long as the next season. One by one those arts and crafts are dying. There’s nobody around to pass them on to the next generation. I mean who knows how to tat these days? There was a glimmer of hope a few years ago when some film star bimbo knitted herself a scarf. Every woman and her dog jumped on the bandwagon, (remember that fantasy wool? It looked fantastic but was hell to knit if you dropped a stitch). It was only a fad.

I don’t want to be an old stick in the mud about it…well actually I do. I have grandchildren now. Their parents expect me to get my knitting needles out of hock. I have commissions galore and need to talk to somebody about a Shaker Rib and reversible knitting stitches.

Coffee, Tea or Bonox

'Coffee, tea or Bonox?' was an advertising slogan. Both the drink and the slogan originated in the US. We seem to have adopted the slogan in Australia (some time in my dim and distant past), but I don't think many of us took to the drink. I began my relationship with coffee at 16 and haven't stopped to take breath since.

The smell of coffee freshly brewed still brings back fond memories of my younger self. Summer or winter, I greeted each new day with a cig in one hand and a coffee in the other. Usually I’d be sharing it all with the birds and the bees out in the garden. What they thought of second hand smoke I’ll never know, but thankfully for me and luckily for them I’ve given up the former. But I’m still hooked on the latter. Those nearest and dearest to me stay well out of the way until I’ve had my caffeine fix. I still can’t function without that first hit.

Is coffee another habit I should kick? If so, then millions of people world-wide should be joining me. But neither I nor they intend to give it up. Coffee has become an integral part of our lives and until somebody offers us something to equal it, we’re sticking with the devil we know.

Coffee has become a generic term for drink. Even if your guests end up drinking herbal tea or milkshakes you will always automatically offer them coffee. Coffee breaks the ice in a variety of social settings and stimulates conversation. And paradoxically while it is said to be a stimulant coffee also relaxes those first date tensions and soothes down lovers’ tiffs.

Coffee smells like ambrosia should taste, but falls far short of that, what a shame. I do keep hoping and trying. Whenever I grind and plunge or mix blends and dripolate I anticipate and salivate at the thought that I may have got that particular blend right this time round. It’s my holy grail, a mission I intend to follow through to the bitter, smooth, bold and playful, organic and fair trade end.

When is the right time?

When do you let go? It’s a question best answered in hindsight because when you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to even know that you need to let go. The answer is, begin at the beginning and keep on going. When your child begins crawling, make your home safe, clear the decks and let him (or her) go. By the time he’s old enough to dress himself he knows the difference between hot and cold, so let him choose his own clothes. If he dresses inappropriately, then the next time round he will pay more attention to what he’s choosing. Teach him about crossing roads safely and begin by watching while he practices on small roads. It’s not one large letting go, but a series of them and each one should suit the right time and the right occasion.

In 2008 a mum called Lenore Skenazy wrote an article about letting go for the New York Sun that caused a stir with a bunch of other mums. I first read about her when she came to Australia in 2010 to sell her book, Free Range Kids. The book was a result of the 2008 experience. Ms Skenazy’s child had begged her to ‘leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own’, and she obliged.

Skenazy had allowed her then 9 year old son to travel the subway alone and make his own way home. ‘One sunny Sunday’ she left him at Bloomingdales armed with 20 dollars, a map, a subway ticket and her blessing. She scoffed at the idea that strangers were lurking nearby just waiting to ‘abduct’ her ‘adorable child.’ It was a strategy calculated to make her detractors feel silly. We must be neurotic is the inference, if we believe that until a child is old enough to protect himself from cunning predators it’s our duty to vigilant on their behalf. I wasn’t convinced by most of Skenazy’s flip justifications and contradictions. She trusted her son to negotiate his way home safely, but worried that he’d lose a cell phone if she provided him with one. It was his first excursion alone but she didn’t think it appropriate to ‘trail her son like a ‘mommy private eye’, New York was hardly ‘downtown Baghdad’ so by comparison NY must be safe. I don’t think Skenazy is a bad mother. I just see her as somebody at the other end of the parenting spectrum. There are the overprotective hovering mums at one end and those like Skenazy at the other. The rest of us are in-betweeners muddling along the best we can. We don’t pretend we know it all; it’s not possible given that we’re rank beginners when our first child arrives. Like any other worthwhile profession, there’s a learning curve involved to good parenting.

Three decades ago my five year old son had already ‘figured out’ how to get home on his own, ‘no problem’, he said, or something like it, I’m paraphrasing as I wasn’t listening at the time. Most young mums tend to zone out occasionally if they value their sanity. We had been walking to and from school all year. It was only a 20 minute walk, but there was a busy highway to negotiate. In hindsight (and ain’t that a grand thing) I should have taken more notice because halfway through the school year, David did walk home by himself.

I was only five minutes late, for heaven’s sake. I took the bus to catch up time and when I arrived, David had left. He had hiked his school bag higher on his shoulder and walked confidently out the front gate along with his peers and their parents.
I scoured the streets then made my way home. My neighbour came out of her house holding the hand of a safe but teary David. He’d been standing outside our front door crying so our neighbour had taken him in and plied him with milk and scones.
I was pretty teary myself and immensely relieved. I hugged David then shook him and asked what had possessed him. It was a spur of the moment decision that could have taken a scary direction, one that doesn’t bear considering. The only good thing that had come out of that event was a lesson learned that thankfully hadn’t proved disastrous.

Given a couple of extra years and David would have come home with friends and his younger brother for company, there’s safety in numbers. He would have a couple of years’ worth of life experience under his belt and the road rules down pat.
If you tell a five year old child not to talk to strangers, he will nod as if he understands, except that in his mind a stranger has fangs and claws. Even if you tell him that a stranger could be a smiling stranger who offers him sweets and ice cream a child is used to doing what he’s told to by adults. What hope would he have had if somebody had forced him into a car?

In January this year a man attempted to abduct a 10 year old boy from a car park in Melbourne’s south-east. This boy was waiting for his mother in the family car when he was approached by a man who offered him lollies. When the boy refused to come with him the man tried to pull the boy from the car. He was unsuccessful that time. But if this man had pulled harder or persisted it could have had a negative ending for that boy and his family.

Adults make hundreds of decisions every day based on life experience and even then they can’t count on getting it right every time. How can you expect it of a five or even a nine year old? Every parent has a responsibility to keep his or her children safe until they’re ready to do it on their own.

The Wheels on the Bus

I was on my way home longing to put my feet up and ready for a cuppa. Browsing at the local shopping complex really takes it out on me these days. Opposite me on the bus sat a woman and her two children. She was perched at the edge of her seat ready to spring into action like the proverbial jack-in-the-box. A two year old girl was in a pram and her brother who looked three or four, an energetic bundle, was busy making mischief. He grabbed his sister’s drink bottle and she shrieked till she got it back; he poked her, she shrieked some more, then he tried to free himself from his mother’s grasp so he could run down the other end of the bus. She threatened to take away privileges, he ignored her.

The two were stuck in that vicious cycle that mums who have more than one child under school age often find themselves. The little boy had misbehaved to get her attention and his frazzled mum gave it to him as he instinctively knew she would. The fact that it was the wrong kind of attention didn’t seem to matter to him. He’d had his mum all to himself for at least two years and now he was forced to share it with a puny, useless little thing who couldn’t talk, couldn’t play games and for some reason he wasn’t able to comprehend, got things her own way all the time. Unfair!

And threats were never going to work on him. At his age he couldn’t conceive as far ahead as the next day or even the same afternoon. ‘You’re going to your room as soon as we get home if you don’t behave’ got that mother nowhere.
An elderly woman sitting next to me implied that if it would all be different if she were in charge. ‘If I had you for two weeks, you’d know what’s what,’ she said. ‘I’m not known as the dragon lady for nothing.’ I visualised a large wooden spoon in this lady’s past and shuddered. The boy ignored her and the mother, at whom it seemed aimed, didn’t respond but I could tell that she felt shamed.
So, what should the mum have done? The answers, never simple, are sure to come to her thick and fast when the children are all grown up, or at least old enough to go to school and give her a break and a chance to think. I usually mind my own business but the poor mum looked so done in I wanted to help.

When my grandchildren and I are out and about I bring along some distractions: a favourite book, colouring book and pencils and the trusty notebook I always carry with me. The latter is used for playing hangman which, for those who haven’t experienced it in their youth, is a game that requires you to think and to know how to spell. Even before she could read, my granddaughter Rachel loved to play ‘I Spy.’ She was most enthusiastic about the game even if she usually got the words wrong. ‘Book doesn’t begin with ‘D’, it begins with ‘B’, Rachel, but good try.’ I made up stories that involved my granddaughters. They weren’t good stories but I don’t think they noticed, children love being the central characters whether in real life or in a story.

I whipped out my notebook book and a biro. ‘Would you like to draw something for mummy?’ I asked. The little boy stopped mid-rampage. I held the notebook out. He looked at his mother who nodded and he slowly took it from my hand. Peace reigned for the five minutes he was on the bus.

I don’t think my actions turned that little boy’s life around or his mother's for that matter. Dealing with the young and the boisterous is too complex a matter for simple solutions. It’s just that as I watched this young mum going under I was overcome with an intense a feeling of déjà-vu. I knew then that whether past, present or future, thousands of mothers have been, are, or will experience the same sort of distress. I imagined this mum sitting on a bus one future day; watching a similar scene playing itself out and nodding knowingly. Perhaps then, she will do as I did and be one mum offering another a lifeline.

Better to give than to receive?

I’ve heard that it is better to give than to receive so I tested out that theory last New Year. I combined my New Year’s resolution with the inspirational truism and offered my excess weight to friends, fellow countrymen and friendly strangers but they were having none of it. It was post the festive season and people had plenty of their own to give away. The competition and I gathered on dark street corners, flipping open belted raincoats at the propitious moment. Please sir, was the plaintive plea, take a kilo home for the missus and the kids, they will thank you.

That tactic did not go down a treat, so I decided cold turkey was the go. If I wanted to lose the kilos I needed to give up eating altogether. That didn’t work any longer than it took to wolf down a chocolate croissant. I needed to nourish the brain cells while planning my strategies. The in between meals are even harder to give away than the fat. And pre dinner nibbles are my downfall. That’s why I love breakfast, there’s no thinking involved. It’s either cereal, or eggs on toast with the trimmings. It’s quick to make and easily scoffed down. Just talking about it gives me an urge for a Spanish omelette. I sat al fresco at my favourite greasy spoon munching at a Danish and slugging down a cappuccino and decided I had to give up on giving up food.

A really nice lady took me around my local gym and introduced me to the equipment. It was a vast, intimidating and confusing array of tortured metal. Each piece specialised in toning up different muscles I was told. The only two I recognised from a past life were the bike and the treadmill. I chose the latter thinking it couldn’t be too hard given that I’ve had a fair bit of practice in walking (although not recently). After five minutes of that I felt light headed. Perhaps I’d lost a kilo off my head. Did I want to try out the aerobics class, the nice lady asked? I checked out the taut bodies that had poured themselves into spandex and decided that I didn’t.

When I got home and weighed myself I discovered that I hadn’t even managed that one kilo. Should I try sensible eating and long walks? Maybe once I have been through all the diet literature