Stories from Rosebud: Aunty Joan.

Aunty Joan

Aunty Joan was my dad’s little sister. She was severely mentally retarded. She never spoke, only communicated using simple hand signs and she made unintelligible noises which expressed how she felt.

When we were kids and went down to Rosebud to visit our grandparents, Joan was sometimes miraculously there and sometimes she wasn’t. I couldn’t get my young head around the concept of institutionalisation. Mum told me that Joan used to live with Grandma and Grandad, but they were too old to look after her properly and so she went to live at a home for people who were like her.

Joan had this force, this energy that seemed strong, innocent, and carefree. She mesmerised me and I was infatuated and a little bit frightened of her. I was only five and a diminutive five too and so Joan seemed like a great big toddler who had free reign of her parent’s home and we all just had to sit and observe this whirlwind of a woman.

What I loved about Joan was her wild look. She dressed in floral dresses, a new one every time I saw her, the kind that were cotton, fresh, sweet and would cost a bomb in vintage shops now, but were from Woolies and quite utilitarian then, and socks and sensible brown brogues. She sometimes had a clip in her hair and she always smelt of Lux soap. She had no teeth and so her mouth was unusual. She wasn’t exactly good looking, but certainly handsome in a tanned, outdoor way. Even though she had a mental disability, you could tell that she had a humorous outlook on life and that her whole world orbited around her beloved parents, brothers and eating as much sugar as she could get her hands on. She had bright, wily eyes that were sea green and piercing; they told of a life lived long term in another world, the world of innocence, a world that we all inhabit, but only fleetingly.

Joan loved Women’s Weekly magazines and she would sit on the couch and flick through them at top speed, stopping at every second page to point and scream in approval at the pictures of food. She would get especially excited when she would see any sweets and gesticulate enthusiastically, point repeatedly at the photo and make noises as if to say “I really like that and I want some now”. Sometimes we would all walk down to Martin’s corner, the local general store and we would buy an icy-pole. We’d bring them back to the house and eat them. Whilst I adored any ice-cream, my hunger would be temporarily stayed and replaced with awe when Joan began to eat her icy pole. You should have seen the way she consumed that thing, pivoting her whole head to get it all in her mouth. There was no manners, daintiness, decorum at all, Joan was a picture of absolute focus, happiness and satisfaction. My brother, sister and I found this incredibly amusing and would have little bursts of laughter and delight as we shot sideways glances at her eating. It wasn’t us being nasty, just completely besotted with the moment and this person, this...Joan.

I was little and there was a part of me that thought I could catch Joan’s affliction. I knew really that I couldn’t, but I was still a bit unsure. There was a part of me that thought she could have talked if she had just gone to school or if someone would only have put some teeth in her head. There was a part of me that thought that Joan might get better and just work out how to talk one day. But none of those things ever happened. I think she talked to me in a dream once; she spoke to me in a quiet, thoughtful voice and said something quite normal, but profound in that dreamlike way.

My Grandad spoke to Joan in a gentle yet clear fashion. His voice spoke of stoicism, resignation, love, sadness and experience. He would have to calm her down when we made to leave because she would get upset. I remember her always being on the move, kinetic energy, pacing, dancing back and forward, always moving. I wish I remembered more.

I remember her not understanding when we went to visit her at the home and Grandad didn’t come. She would ask for him, point to a photo of him and point and point. Everyone at the home was like Joan, but they weren’t the same, they didn’t have her energy, they weren’t as loved. Joan’s parents loved her but they couldn’t keep her. They put their trust in the government, but the government let her down.

Joan would wander all over Rosebud. Everybody knew her and would greet her with a friendly familiarity. She would plough on past them on her mission which was to walk. Joan would walk and walk for miles I’m told. I often wondered if she was trying to find her answers, if she was driven by some inner knowledge of her allusive adulthood and independent life. She was as fit as a flea, and if we were with her, we’d have to gallop to keep up.

Ah Joan, you are dead now, but I can still see your face, your face that would surprise me each time I saw you because I had normalised it in my mind between our meetings and when I met you again I was reminded of you and who you were and what you were missing.

And tied up in this story of Joan is a little tragedy, something that is so sad that it makes my heart ache a bit. But that part of the story will have to wait. I’m not sure how to write it.

*I got to take my family to the Rosebud house just a few weeks ago. I was seeing it for the first time in about 20 years. I didn’t know what to expect. The house was between tenants, was empty. Dad gave me the back door key. When we arrived, the kids ran on ahead into the back yard. And I followed with the key.

My dad had said “There’s nothing left there now”. He was speaking of the sentimental pull he had had from his family’s home, the atmosphere, the remnants of past lives.

But as I opened the door, I was immediately back there, five years old, remembering the lay out of the house, remembering where the furniture had been. What struck me immediately was the smell of the house. It was exactly the same as it had always been. Slightly musty, with the smell of thousands of roast dinners imbued into the floorboards. And the very distinct, strong smell of Lux soap.

Our children raced around the house enthusiastically, speaking about which room would be theirs if it became our holiday house. They loved the house and wanted us to buy it from my parents. Benny went into the back yard and promptly picked a lemon and began to play ‘Catchy with a lemon’ with the others, with a smile and a pointed look at me.

We didn’t stay long. Everyone went outside to prepare to leave. Just for a few moments I was left by myself in the house. I walked into Joan’s room. I remember her little brown utilitarian bed that had stood against the wall, covered in beautiful crocheted blankets and other more practical blankets. Neat, practical and clean with a touch of vibrancy, just like Joan herself. I remembered that I never wanted to sleep in Joan’s bed when we stayed at the house, it was too much, too close; I might catch her disease. My sister slept in Joan’s bed and I had to share a big, creaky, lumpy old double bed with my farting brother...hmm.

Why are these stories relevant to this blog? Because these events have shaped me and the kind of parent I am. They have been enmeshed in what makes me a good parent and the mistakes I make too. We are not just parents isolated, unencumbered, free agents, able to clearly decide how to do what’s best. We have the voices of generations of forebears whispering in our ears, memories to contend with and ideas drummed into us. As parents we have to wade through all of this and feel the drag every time we plough forward. Sometimes our progress is easy and we are buoyant, but at other times we have to fight to stay afloat.

Real, not powdered, eggs.

Stories from Rosebud.

My grandparents retired to Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula. They bought a little cottage near the bay.When my sister and brother and I were little we would go down to Rosebud almost every weekend so that we could see our grandparents and my dad could cut the grass and do some general maintenance as was expected of a good son.

My grandad would cook a huge Sunday roast with yorkshire pudding and soft, roast potatoes that had a gorgeous fatty crust, over done beans and I think some carrots. He made it all on an ancient Kooka stove. My siblings loved it, I only ate the potatoes. Stewed home grown fruit for desert, I remember the taste still and the texture of furry apricot skin in heavy sugar syrup with plump fruit underneath.

My grandma was confined to a daybed after a stroke. I never saw my grandmother walk. She was like a queen, laid up in the living room in a wicker day bed, covered in hand knitted and crocheted blankets. She was a muted, multi coloured fixture of the room with a whirl of light grey hair who gave us each a 20 cent piece to go to the corner shop to get an icy-pole.

We were never given many details about Grandma, just that she had a stroke, this mysterious thing that stopped her from walking. Her presence filled the room so that if you were in it, you just kind of had to be an appendix to her, not an individual. This was not because she had a huge personality, but because she was centre stage and there was no denying it. So we three kids would do our polite and stiff hello’s and have a brief chat (as was required by good grandchildren) and then escape outside in to the boring Rosebud day.

How did we spend those long days after we had been to the shop, eaten and had a brief chat with the grandparents? Invariably, my sister and brother plucked a ripe lemon off the tree and played “catchy with a lemon” (that was the game de jour). “Lets go outside and play catchy with a lemon” someone would wearily suggest. A utilitarian name. I was never good at catchy with a lemon, so after making a bit of an effort, I was usually sidelined and left to fend off my own boredom. The television was no help, as it seemed there were only old movies set in ancient Rome staring Tony Curtis (in a Toga), on or old Elvis movies, nothing at all interesting. Or wrestling, which my grandad loved.

In hindsight, the place had a lot of charm. A huge back yard, full of burgeoning fruit trees, a vegetable garden where I would pull albino, unready carrots with wonder out of the soil, an old granny flat, so musty and mouldy that we were discouraged to enter. If only I’d had an adult perspective of time and not needed to be constantly stimulated or entertained, it would have been a lovely place to visit. Instead, it was like a waiting room with a few little reprieves throughout the day, which were still solidly coloured by the heaviness of Greater Rosebud.

The thick smell of ripening peaches and nectarines harvested from the garden’s fruit trees always permeated the house, as did the plump roses that sat in bowls in every room. It seemed that the fruit was always splitting ripe and the flowers just ever so slightly past their best, so the smell was pungent and if you stayed too long, sickly sweet. Most of the giant peaches were incomparably delicious, but often the stone would split open to reveal a white delicate web with a foetus-like grub curled up waiting in the centre.

In the afternoon in Summer, Grandad would listen to the cricket on the crackling radio and forgot about his visiting family as he sat and smoked and listened to the droning voice of the cricket commentator. We would flop around the house, itching to be somewhere else. Sometimes we would go down to the bay. But a more boring beach could not be imagined. The water stayed the same depth for miles it seemed and you had to plough through a thick wall of sea-weed before the water cleared and you could swim. There were no waves and mostly no sound. A silent, still, smelly, seaweedy beach. My mum didn’t help matters. It was obvious that she was there under duress too. She was a surf beach girl and the waves enlivened her, made her hair wild and curly and her movements girlish. But the bay didn’t interest her all that much.

Rosebud reeked of retirement. No kids outside and if there ever were any, they all looked a bit strange; not like the usual kids that raced around in our neighbourhood. These looked lonely and needy and unkempt, like kids from a different era. Everyone else was old, but you never actually saw them, just imagined them all being old in their respective houses with their fruit and flowers and all of this added to the quiet, seriousness of the place. Even when the sun was shining, the stillness was disconcerting and not conducive to frivolity.

I often wondered why there was such sombreness connected to any dealings with my grandparents. I never heard them laugh, and seldom saw them smile. There was no lightness, no fast movements. They could only concede to give us a few minutes of their time in conversation, and then the silence would descend again. My dad made attempts at being jolly and would place a spring in his voice and keep the chat breezy. My grandparents answered well enough and took interest, but didn’t spring back and bounce off him like they should have done. Grandad and Grandma weren’t negative or nasty or disinterested, they were just...themselves and that happened to be contentedly serious.

My father talked about how noble his father’s generation was. People of few words, strong, stoic, dependable. I think my dad thought that ‘modern’, younger generations, his included, just weren’t made of the same stuff. He always listened with baited breath to any old world war 1 veterans and commented about how these people even sounded different, used different pronunciations and inflections. Dad had the older generation firmly up on a pedestal. Whereas I wanted an American ‘Waltons’ style grandparent; one that talked to you, tucked you into bed, indulged you, laughed with you, probably lived with you and had a special relationship that was enriching and meaningful. I wanted a grandparent that would give you sage advice just at the perfect moment and spin yarns about their childhood that brought the past alive. But that was not my experience and I felt cheated.

Probably many adults in Australia would have had that same experience, I know my husband did, also having emotionally distant grandparents. These were people who emerged from Georgian, war time frugality, who lived through the depression and had to do much girding of loins. All subsequent generations haven’t had it tough like that and I guess it would indeed change the perspective of a generation. The way I see it, is that the post war generation were allowed to have fun, laugh and enjoy their lives again. Eat real, not powdered eggs and the older adults who had lived through the suffering were rendered unable to reenter that mindset. War had made them more constrained, resilient perhaps, and aware of the reality of hardship.

My other grandparents (from Geelong) were a different lot altogether. They played instruments, sang, laughed, whistled, played with model train sets, owned a silly Hammond organ with a Calypso and Cha-Cha beats. Nanna collected Kewpie dolls and Poppa missed out on serving in the war because he worked in a critical area here and couldn’t be spared even though he was in the army reserves. Poppa built a speed boat and named it after my mum and could pick up any instrument and play it as if it were a natural extension of his body. My mum and her sister were both musically talented and my mum became a concert violinist. This was a very different family. These grandparents always embraced me in a big bear hug when we arrived and cried when we left after a visit. But we saw them much less frequently than the Rosebud grandparents.

I really preferred my mum’s batty, bright and emotive parents, I saw dad’s ones far more frequently. But I loved them all. The four of them are gone now and I think of them and remember them fondly. My parents both have reverberations of them that are becoming more pronounced in their old age. My parents are very different grandparents to our children than their parents were to me. My dad stands on the coffee table and sings Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald songs, reads books, cuddles and tells them stories of his boyhood. He espouses words of wisdom (as he sees it) to them in a sombre voice. He goes walking with them and asks about their lives. He helps whenever I need it and smiles and laughs a lot.

When I go to Rosebud now, I find it lovely. The bay is cleaner, but still so still, like a big blue swimming pool, serene and warm. I love the slightly pongy smell on the breeze and the little painted beach boxes. I love the fact that it is not Sorrento or Portsea or even Dromana.

My parents still own the house in Rosebud, but they rent it out. I know though, that if I walked in through the front door, that Grandad’s house would smell exactly how I remembered it. The floorboards steeped in peaches, roasts, roses, retirement, cigarettes the salty beachy air and the memories of my childhood.

Tripping the Time Elastic.

What did I ever do with my time before I had children? I know I was busy, but doing what?

Rarely now, I find myself with a window of time to fill without children. Often my thoughts turn to them, wondering about them, what they are doing and whether I am doing a good enough job as a parent. I always have something, too many things to do. But sometimes I needs time to get bored and often that only happens when I have some precious me time. When I talk about boredom its good, healthy, organic boredom that comes from a glut of time but which can be moved about in, felt and expressed with energy. Not the kind of boredom that happens when you are in a waiting room.

Dontcha just hate it when you are in a waiting room and each minute feels like an hour? Waiting room time is horrible because you can’t work through your boredom; stand up and spin around on your heel and sing a David Bowie song and look at yourself in the mirror and decide what you would look like with a fringe or a face-lift. You can’t go outside to collect the mail and then feel the breeze on your skin, or watch your baby sleeping with a goofy expression or even exhale loudly, wondering what to do next.

No in the waiting room you have to watch your baby sleeping with an acceptable, nondescript serenity and you can’t break into a lullaby or cry because your baby is so beautiful. No you have to read a magazine. Time is at its heaviest there because your boredom is contained, restrained and not natural. It’s creatively stifling. That’s bad boredom.

But time is mercurial and it runs away from me and I get into a lather trying to keep up. No time for boredom, unless I snaffle a few hours and I’ll tell you how later.

Modern family life happens at warp speed. I haven’t got enough time to work out how many hours are spent ferrying our children around, but I know that as the kids have gotten older, there are more commitments, commutes, drop-offs, pick-ups than I could have imagined. We have one afternoon per working week when no one needs to be anywhere after school. And our family is conservative by comparison. Our 16 month old quickly learned how to say the word “Car! Brrrrrm Brrrrrrm” early in the piece.

One hectic year, our daughter was doing so much that she made a decision to reclaim her Sunday mornings and chose to give up being a Junior Farmer at the Collingwood Children’s Farm. “I just want one day where I can sleep in and have nothing to do” she said. What a smart 10 year old she was. That year, our beautiful Immi was doing: gymnastics twice a week, dance, guitar, farm, choir, swimming. She is a shiny girl of light, a doer and an achiever. She coped so well with all of these activities, we just thought that life was full and she was having a ball.

My husband and I are both educators with a firm belief that kids require time in their lives to just kick around, get bored and use that as a springboard for creativity. Wallowing in time is a necessity, and shouldn’t be a luxury for children. We knew this at a cellular level and espoused it all over the place professionally and personally. Yet all of Immi’s activities just sort of accumulated. And it took our 10 year old to say “enough already”.

Last year Immi broke her leg at gymnastics. It was a severe break and she had to stop gym for the rest of the year. She was forced to slow down. Suddenly she went from doing 13 hours a week of gym, to nothing and being in plaster too. For the first few weeks, Immi was beside herself, bored, frustrated and stir-crazy. But then she began to draw, to sew, to listen to music, trawl my wardrobe and begin to wear my funny old hats. She began to develop a style of her own. She seemed to relish the time that this broken leg had allowed her. Now she was using her time, filling her hours and contemplating life without hours and hours of gym.

When it came time to start gym again, Immi didn’t want to. Instead she applied for a job as a trainee gym coach at her gymnastics school and was successful. “This way I get to go to gym, because I love it there, but not have to do 13 hours a week”. Smart cookie and she gets paid too. She has begun private art lessons and wants to begin ballet. Even with these activities, her hours wont come near to the gym rigmarole.

As for me I steal time. I squirrel it away from my sleep hours and then glean it back on the weekends when I can have a bit of a sleep in and a catch up. I nick time and the stolen time is usually in the wee small hours. Sometimes I waste that time with telly, sometimes I write or cook or read. It’s naughty time because I really pay for it later. But I figure I’m a mum of a little baby and my sleep is so screwed up anyway that I can play around with it a bit. That’s my feeble excuse anyway, not much of a one.

I never feel like I have enough time. Sometimes I feel perpetually one step behind and other times I feel that I’m being so consumed by my present that I lose perspective and forget to enjoy life. Sometimes life feels like a series of tasks that have to be performed and then ticked off and I’m glad they’re done. Instead I should be fully experiencing the moment and enjoying it. I don’t go in for Oprah maxims, but she once talked about the importance of living inside yourself as opposed to living outside of yourself. Being true to the moment and being present there and not thinking about what has to be done next or what people think of you. It rang true to me and I try to find a stillness and a perspective that is not so close and so frenzied all the time.

I’m not always successful, but sometimes I am and these times will make up my memories.

Dontcha just love it when you are so absorbed in something that time flies?

Left of the Centre of my Universe

Did anyone else feel like they were stealing their baby as they left the hospital with their newborn? We were amazed that ‘they’ were letting two novices leave with a tiny bundle of sweet smelling perfection. “I can’t believe they’re letting us just walk out of here” I said to my husband as we carried out precious cargo out to the car. We drove home so slowly that it was ridiculous. There should be a bumper sticker that you can put onto your car that says: “first time parents driving their baby home for the first time” , like “Just Married” or “Learner Driver”, deserving of special compensation on the road and extra indulgence from fellow commuters. Once home, we placed our sleeping baby into her bassinet and just looked in awe at her. I flung a private prayer out to the four corners of the universe that my mothering skills would match the enormity of my love for this wonderful child that was in our charge.

That precious baby is now sixteen years old . Our fourth baby is nearly sixteen months old and nearly a decade younger than our next youngest. B was a surprise baby in the most positive sense. April 2009, away at the beach for Easter, the glass of red wine infront of me made me feel nauseous. Hmmm I thought, and then “Nup” I thought, “I couldn’t be pregnant. I’ve recently had a huge fibroid removed from my uterous, I’m incapable of getting pregnant”. So I put it out of my mind and drank that glass of wine.

One week later at the supermarket, my hand alighted on a pregnancy test. Hmmm, can’t do any harm to buy it apart from the mild disappointment I’ll feel when it shows negative. So it got chucked into the trolley and forgotten about until a few days passed and my period still hadn’t arrived. I thought it more likely to be menopause than pregnancy.

It was a work day morning, and we were all bustling about when our world came to a halt. The little window in the pregnancy test immediately showed two stripes; positive! I opened the bathroom door and called my husband in. I was hyperventilating and he knew straight away. “You’re not!” he said. “I’m pregnant” I said “Oh my God”. We sat on the edge of the bath and giggled like naughty school children.

We didn’t tell our three children immediately being pretty sure that this early pregnancy would come to nothing. I had miscarried before and what with my age and the scarring from my surgery, things didn’t seem that likely to come to fruition. So my husband and I kept our secret to ourselves, but not for long. First we told our daughter who was the eldest. We thought she could cope if the pregnancy failed, but we primed her and warned her that things may not work out. Then we told our boys. I can still recall their reaction. They whooped, jumped about and cheered. I cried at their delight, never expecting such a huge reaction. “oh MY GOD” my oldest boy kept saying “You’re going to HAVE A BABY!!! MUM!” They understood that not all pregnancies become babies and that sometimes things go wrong. I crossed my fingers and hoped our little bean would make it. Suddenly we all owned our budding baby and we all held our collective breaths until we knew all was well.

“Am I the oldest woman in the world to be having a baby?” I asked my obstetrician. “Not even close” she said. “My oldest pregnant patient was 48 and she conceived naturally and did brilliantly. You’ll be fine.”

And I was fine and B was fine. And for the fourth time we got to steal our baby and take him home from the hospital. Did I feel like an old hand at parenthood after four children? Just quietly, no. I felt that it was familiar, but noted how much I had forgotten and wondered how I could have forgotten these tender, special things. Then realised that I hadn’t really forgotten them at all, but was getting another chance to be reminded and to experience these wonderful moments again. Things like inhaling the smell of your newborn, feeling the tug on your breast, those still, silences in the small hours of the morning when it seems that you and your baby are the only people on earth. The feel of the tiny hand grasping your finger and those incredible little sounds that babies make when they feed. How privileged and blessed I felt to be getting to do all this again.

Be encouraged if you are older and want to conceive. Parenting is a life time pursuit. I never want to be the ‘expert’, I will always be a learner, because my children will never stop evolving; they will continue to surprise, delight and intrigue me. I will forever be in their debt for taking me left of the centre of my universe.