Is It Just Me?

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Is It Just Me? Page 4

by Chrissie Swan


  I went to a Catholic girls’ school. Now, before you jump to any conclusions about me wandering the timber halls protecting my candle from the breeze during prayer vigils (and let’s be honest, there was a fair bit of that), let me just say for the record that if I could’ve had a boyfriend, I would’ve. I had rampaging crushes that inspired behaviour that today would probably get me jailed for stalking. I obsessed. I calculated compatibility according to how many letters our combined names had in common with the word “loves”. If I got a low score with the boy I was in love with I’d just change the spelling. I tried this trick with everyone I ever met, and only stopped when I’d reached a rare 99 per cent compatibility with Omar Camel.*

  Boys were just a mystery. I never knew what to say when they were talking to me. I felt like the guys I knew wanted small, quiet blonde girls. Not big, brunette, curly ones who belly-laughed and loved the Smiths. I always felt so conspicuous, and “less” than.

  I clearly remember watching a film clip in 1986, possibly on Countdown. The song was “Breakout” by a one-hit-wonder band called Swing Out Sister. They had a bob-haired woman as the singer and two other male members. I studied the clip intently, and learnt all the words.

  That achieved, I continued on with thoughts such as: “Wow. That woman is in a band with men. They’re not married … so they must be friends? Imagine having a male friend? What do they talk about? Is she always trying to keep quiet and not be funny? Do they want to kiss her even though she looks like a bit of a show-off?”

  So I never had any boyfriends and was deeply jealous of the girl at our school who was rumoured to be “doing it”. Boohoo.

  But now I believe I’ve hit the man jackpot. My fella is both charming and sexy. He really likes me, and I like him, and we are enormously happy, and, frankly, I don’t want to mess with it by doing what many articles suggest and go off to “buy a vibrator together”. I just can’t imagine it. I would laugh. A lot. Then I’d get worried it would get weird and I’d have to mumble, “Only joking. Let’s get home to the kids.” Oh, yeah. Foxy. That’s me!

  I’ve even heard people say that women who are adamant they don’t have a toy at home are lying. I assure you, I’m not lying.

  It may be a generational thing. Those “aids”, in my memory, are sold in creepy stores that always seem to be accessible only via a shady doorway and a flight of stairs. The windows are painted out. If anything, I’ve always found this particular line of merchandise to be funny, not sexy. And definitely just for other people.

  It seems, though, that women have been secreting away these pleasure machines for decades. My friend’s brother actually found a little something in his own mum’s shelves. Let’s say he got a little more than he bargained for one Sunday afternoon in the ’80s while playing murder in the dark in her walk-in wardrobe. Technically, he wasn’t snooping … because who knew glow-in-the-dark technology and sex toys were a match made in heaven? The horror/hilarity of this story has gone down in folklore among that group of friends. And his mother’s name, Brenda, is now only pronounced “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrenda”.

  Perhaps that has scarred me? The hushed laughter we all shared over that story has meant that this topic has hitherto meant comedy, not titillation. There’s no doubt, as I write this, that I am showing my age, conservatism and possibly immaturity.

  But by all accounts “things have changed” … so excuse me while I get enlightened and turn to the naughty pages in the magazine. I always did love a sealed section!

  10th June 2012

  Cold-weather warmers

  There is a lot to dislike about winter. It’s cold, for a start. And I, for one, always seem to be in a maniacal hurry from one form of heating (car, office, home) to another and back again. My skin cracks up from the change in climate. My winter coat gets snugger year on year. And I don’t like scarves. But all these negatives magically disappear when you remember that there is soup. And shanks. And mash.

  Nothing puts me in a better mood than when I stop at my local butcher to pick up some chicken bones for my world-famous cream of chicken soup. Meticulously dicing the celery and carrot is not just a recipe step … I kind of commune with them.

  Summer in Australia is the stuff of legend. November hits and the suburbs are awash, or at least mine is, with the smoky aroma of sizzling snags and fatty lamb chops. But let’s not forget the chillier cousin. Winter is the season when the oven comes into its own. And it’s also the season when I happily pull out all my nifty appliances that have been gathering dust while the metal skewers and salad servers get a good workout. I have a slow cooker. I think I wept when I chose the one with a timer. This means I can throw all sorts of things in it before I go to work, and when I get home the smell of succulent chicken pieces, herbs from the garden and sweet, translucent shallots greets me before my three-year-old has even had a chance to tear around the corner on his trike.

  Nothing says, “Welcome home,” like the smell of a winter meal.

  I remember playing in the streets around my house when I was about six years old. We lived in a newish suburb in the late ’70s and there were lots of dark-brown brick and quarry tiles and ferneries. There were also great casseroles. Early one evening, in that delicious free time between primary school knock-off and when Dad wanted to watch the news, I was playing with an Indian boy who lived close to my place. We might have been having a heated discussion about which Kiss member we most identified with and – bang! – it hit us: the aromatic waft of a slow-cooked-from-scratch curry.

  Kavin’s mother was a petite woman who wore bright saris and said very little. I believe that when you know your way around a cumin seed and a knob of ghee like she did, you can let your cooking do the talking. Instead of calling out to her children to come in for dinner, or ringing a bell (as my Irish Catholic friend’s mother used to do), she would simply open the front door of her home. Slowly, the warm smells of dinner would creep out into the street and tell Kavin he was about to get the feed of his life.

  Discussion stopped. He ran inside. And I moseyed back to my place for my evening meal, probably of apricot chicken. Or, if it was Blankety Blanks night, Rice-a-Riso.

  The cooler months are the patron saints of home. We can’t wait to get back there. In summer we’re always out. We’re splashing in pools, picnicking in parks and licking ice-creams on bustling streets at 8pm, because we can. Not in winter. Winter is for corduroy and remote controls. For mugs of things and doonas. For lamb shoulder and pork belly.

  In fact, I think roasts might just be the overall heroes of winter. I was always scared of roasting a chook and only perfected my technique a few years ago. A crisp-skinned bird, stuffed with rosemary, parsley and thyme and a lemon, if I have one, is to me the perfect frosty weather treat. It ticks all the boxes. Delicious, obviously. Economical, yes (there’s the next-day sangas, stock from the bones and let’s not forget the sneaky post-dinner clean-up “pickover”). But there’s also the chicken smell. It’s a smell that says to my family that I love them madly. It fills the house and even surrounds the garden with the misty aroma of care. Even the next-door neighbours can smell it. I like to think they get envious.

  And when my fella has been out all day working on a building site, hunched over a tepid sausage roll for smoko, then listening to the dire traffic reports on the radio on the way home, it makes me swell with pride knowing that as soon as he pulls into our driveway, he will take great sniffs of a home-cooked meal. The house will be warm. He will come in, dump his little blue lunchbox, unzip his coat and say, “Dinner smells great, Cakie.” For me, that means job done.

  Now … why am I so hungry?

  17th June 2012

  Clowning around for a good cause

  My parents thought they had finished having their children in their twenties, just as all their friends had. So when, in her thirties, Mum discovered she was pregnant with me, she was, to put it mildly,
surprised. My sisters were much older than me and all our family friends had children of similar age, so I spent my childhood really feeling like the odd one out.

  It never crossed my mind that someone’s mum could be pregnant because I’d never seen it. At primary school my friends’ mothers must have finished their families, too, because no one ever welcomed a baby sister or brother. We all dreamt about it, but it never happened – until Year 5 when a schoolmate announced her mum was having a baby.

  I eyed her mother off at school pick-up and watched her belly grow. I was two parts fascinated and one part jealous as hell. Wasn’t it every ten-year-old girl’s dream to have a real live baby at home to put in a stroller and dress up like Holly Hobbie?

  At the last school pick-up of the year, I saw my friend’s mum in something smocky, heaving her other small kids into the Nissan Prairie, and I knew that by the time we’d covered our maths books in contact paper for the following year, she’d be strapping another little one into the people mover.

  But that was not to be. When we returned to school there was no baby.

  He had been born. He had been named. He had been shuttled home in a hand-me-down baby suit to the embraces of his eager siblings and awe-struck parents. But one morning, a few weeks into his new life, he did not wake up. He just didn’t. No symptoms, no illness, no warning. He was gone.

  And that was my first experience with the unfathomable horror that is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). I can imagine nothing knocks you down quite so quickly and permanently as losing a baby.

  When my babies were small (and not so small) I would get such a thrill walking into their bedrooms to see them first thing in the morning. To find your baby still and silent when you excitedly go to see their face … well. Even the thought of it brings tears to my eyes and a little crack across my heart.

  A few years after my friend lost her baby brother, Red Nose Day – run by the SIDS and Kids charity – began. Initially, I thought the idea was crass. It was such a serious thing, to lose a baby. How can we clown around about it? But as Red Nose Day became so popular, so visible, so effective, I realised the red nose was not about making light of a devastating topic – it was about making a point. It was about speaking about the unspeakable.

  Red Nose Day has worked. The research that has been done by SIDS and Kids has been, quite literally, life-saving. The fact that we sleep our babies on their backs, keep their cots uncluttered, keep them in the same room as us where possible and breastfeed if we can is reducing cases of sudden infant death syndrome every single day.

  We weren’t always doing all of that before. Plenty of families have cringeworthy recollections, usually with a ’60s or ’70s soundtrack, of their mother, her mouth with a ciggie hanging out of it, rearranging a toy-infested bassinet and wondering, “If a nightie is highly inflammable, does it mean it’s likely or unlikely to go up in flames when placed in front of a molten-lava bar heater?”

  We have come so, so far.

  Since the first Red Nose Day was held in 1988, cases of infant death by SIDS have decreased by 80 per cent. That’s thousands of babies who are now growing up and destroying rusks and writing notes to Santa and dragging their parents to Dora the Explorer Live! Thousands. Of. Babies.

  We can thank SIDS and Kids for this, but we can thank ourselves, too. By buying that silly red nose and putting it on our faces, or on the front of our car or our office building, we have contributed to life-saving research.

  I always buy whatever I can from the SIDS and Kids card table outside my supermarket, and when my children were newborn I popped onto their website to make sure I was doing everything I could to reduce the risks.

  So if you can spare a few dollars on the next Red Nose Day, I can just see the thousands of tiny hands that will applaud you – or high-five you, if you’re into that instead.

  24th June 2012

  Self-appointed experts

  I ask for advice all the time. My main sounding board is my fella, The Chippie, who gives great, no-nonsense and harshly concise advice that often contains an expletive. I like it that way, because more often than not in the lead-up to actually asking for said advice I’ve spent countless hours umming and aahing and writing lists of pros and cons. By the time I get around to asking his opinion I’m usually so confused I need a verbal smackdown.

  For example, when I was making a huge decision to leave a job for another I endured most of the indecisive torment on my own. Until I’d come to an impasse. I broached the topic with The Chippie and here’s how it went:

  “So … what should I do?”

  “You like hanging out with your kids. Take a job that makes that happen. And if it doesn’t work out, then do something else. I’m going to the shed.”

  And so the decision was made.

  I seek counsel on matters of couches, throws and shrugs from my friend Jane. She’s earned her stripes through her passionate hatred of orange. Anyone who feels so strongly about a colour must know all there is to know about interiors. She also multi-tasks as an adviser on parenting – her daughter is spirited, polite and artistic and maybe I want one just like that.

  I am constantly asking for advice and eagerly await responses from my crack team of clever friends. But what about advice that is given when you didn’t ask for it? Has this ever happened to you?

  This week I have received no fewer than three pieces of unsolicited advice and, as a result, I have experienced unprecedented levels of huffiness. First, a no-brainer. Someone emailed me with advice on weight loss. It didn’t have the subject “Lose that jelly belly NOW!” – I have a spam filter for those. It was from, I think, a nutrition student and probably made a lot of sense, had I read it all. But I didn’t ask for help or advice from this person and it annoyed me. It doesn’t take a genius to know I am overweight but is it anyone’s right to assume I need advice on the matter, or indeed that I want to change or am not already seeking advice elsewhere?

  The next day I received an email from someone instructing me on the dos and don’ts of writing a column. I thank you, by the way, and I hope I’m doing an all-right job. I love writing these pieces but I am under no illusion that I am the next Proust. I have in the past solicited advice from people I admire, but the difference is I asked for it. The notes in the email I received were handy. But insulting. As I was reading it, all I could hear was my internal dialogue saying, “Clearly I’m bad at this and I didn’t even know it.”

  Which brings me to the last bit of unsolicited advice I got in my inbox. This one happened yesterday. And it involved the P word. Parenting – there is no more sensitive topic. The person who sent the email thought I’d be “interested in attending a parenting workshop”. Hold up? As a participant? Yes: as someone who wasn’t “enjoying their children as much as they should” and could work on being a “confident and calm” parent.

  It’s not often I talk to my iPad. Apart from the occasional “Yes!” after nabbing a set of old school lockers or a Toy Story 3 Zurg figurine on eBay, our relationship is generally a mute one. But on this occasion I looked at its screen, cosy in a case my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday, and said, “Oh. My. God.”

  Parenting workshops are a great idea and provide support and ideas for people who need them. FOR PEOPLE WHO NEED THEM. I’m not saying I’m a perfect parent but how you raise your kids, along with every other thing you do in your life, is up to you. If we identify parts of our lives that are causing us concern, then we have the right to seek advice. What is crucial, though, is that we come to identify our problems and shortcomings ourselves, not have them brought to light by people who are making bold assumptions based on, well, nothing at all.

  We can almost cope with unsolicited advice from people within our lives but when it comes from those you’ve never met, who’ve never seen your home/what you eat/how you cope with your kids in the midst of a supermarket meltdown
, then “helpful pointers” are not only ridiculous, they’re hurtful. And only fuel the insecurities that threaten to slow us down when we’re all just doing the best we can.

  1st July 2012

  Super 8 memories

  I have known my partner for just over five years. In that time we have had two children, signed on for a crippling mortgage, built a gigantic deck, installed a remote on our fifty-year-old garage door and located all the local pubs where “kids eat free”. As you can tell, all the important stuff has been achieved with great speed or, as my dad says, “You don’t muck around, do you, darling?”

  One of my life’s regrets (apart from not being born Greek … the gyros, the plate smashing, the abundance of family, dancing and spits over the barbecue in the backyard) is that I met my partner when he was thirty-two years old and not when he was one day old.

  Weirdly, we grew up within about four kilometres of each other, he with his brothers, and me with my sisters. I think we even spent our pocket money on lay-bys at the same toy store called Griselda’s. Great times.

  Luckily, his father made movies. Lots of them. In the early ’70s, he invested in a Super 8 camera. No doubt, it would have been a massive outlay because, from what I can gather, back in the day blocks of land were sold for $5 a square foot, and TVs were roughly $4 million. Sure, seems fair. Anyway, my father-in-law set about documenting every baptism, birthday, picnic and backyard burn-off that occurred in that family from about 1972 to 1983. The eight-millimetre film was then left in a box for twenty-five years or so until about two weeks ago, when my partner, The Chippie (aka the second-born son), took them all away and had them converted to DVD.

  What happened next was one of the most memorable days of my life. Because I pressed play and there he was: as a baby, as a boy. The man I knew better than anyone, in a time before “we” even existed. His first birthday party, in 1976, was held in a garden shed, the table piled with Iced VoVos, home-made chocolate cake and bright-orange cocktail frankfurts. The chubby blond baby in the metal and orange vinyl high chair looked bewildered by the fuss. His Uncle George, resplendent in Barry Gibb-style chest hair and an open-neck terry-towel tee, tenderly ran a hand over the birthday babe’s round little head in a gesture of such familiarity and love that it caught in my throat.

 

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