by Helen Brown
‘You stayed in touch all these years?’ I asked, straightening the Tibetan wall-hanging and trying to keep my tone neutral.
Lydia was reluctant to answer.
‘I’ve organised a few meditation retreats for him when he’s been back in Australia,’ she said casually, gazing enigmatically through her window out to the sky where a crow flapped against grey cloud.
Something jarred inside my chest. I thought I knew my daughter.
We’d had battles of will over the years, but they’d been over trivial stuff like hairstyles and piano lessons. I’d learnt the hard way that confronting her was pointless. Far simpler to let her dye her hair purple and grow out of it. But this felt more serious.
Flipping through my mental filing cabinet, I recalled her mentioning organising the occasional meditation retreat. I’d encouraged her, thinking meditation might give her skills to deal with exam studies and stress in general. It hadn’t occurred to me that the monk had been involved. Maybe I hadn’t taken enough notice or asked enough questions.
I’ve never been one of those women who want their daughters to be their best friends, sharing jeans and bedroom gossip. Lydia was raised to be independent and strong. On the other hand, I was taken aback she’d felt the need to hide how important the monk had become in her life.
If she thought I’d disapprove of her exploring a spiritual path, she didn’t know me very well. I’d always encouraged the kids to be open minded about that sort of thing.
Surely I wasn’t intrusive, the way Mum had been with me when I was young? The Gestapo had nothing on Mum when it came to interrogation. She’d delved so inquisitively into my life, I’d been forced to twist the truth quite regularly. But Mum was easy to shock. She had a long list of things she disapproved of – sex, left-wing politicians, Catholics, vegetarians, people from almost every foreign country . . .
I didn’t disapprove of meditation or Buddhism. In fact, of all religions, I regarded it as the least offensive. But I couldn’t help wondering why Lydia had chosen to shut me out from an important part of her life. Was it rebellion?
As I straightened a prayer flag, my mind spun into worst-case-scenario mode. I’d heard so many stories about young people getting sucked into religion and exploited by charismatic leaders. It was dangerous territory.
‘Your room looks lovely,’ I said, swallowing all the anxiety that wanted to spill out.
I hurried downstairs and closed our bedroom door. If Lydia was in thrall to a Buddhist monk, and had been for years, it was probably too late to do anything about it. I reached for the phone and put it down again. Philip was probably in another meeting.
If only Cleo was around, she’d know what to do. She’d jump up on the covers and nestle purring into my stomach until I got my head around this.
Without Cleo, I had to find another form of comfort. Ten deep yoga breaths . . .
If I challenged Lydia and accused her of deception, I knew what she’d say. She was twenty-three years old, officially an adult. She had a right to keep secrets, even from her mother.
Especially from her mother.
Forbidden
The dreams of cats and daughters are invariably secret
One of the good things about raising three children is whenever one of them is worrying you sick, chances are at least one of the other two is causing you no strife at all. They may even be bringing you joy.
Soon after we moved into Shirley, Rob and Chantelle acquired a kitten – or should I say a baby with four legs and a tail? A silvery Burmese with golden eyes, Ferdie was a friendly ball of fur. His stocky frame needed filling, which was good because Ferdie loved food almost as much as he adored his doting mum and dad. When Rob held the tiny creature baby-style in his arms, I gulped back emotion. His face was soft and tender as he smiled down at the little creature. Time folded back on itself and I could almost see six-year-old Rob nursing Cleo the same way. Except now Rob was very much a man, well over six feet tall, and the kitten looked like a toy in his arms. Thinking back over how Cleo had helped Rob laugh and play games again after his brother Sam’s death back in 1983, I was touched to see him open his heart to another kitten. Cleo had taught Rob to trust life again. Ferdie was providing him with a gentle introduction to fatherhood.
Whenever we visited Rob and Chantelle in their new townhouse across the bay in Newport, Ferdie was the focus of attention. No kitten could have been showered with more devotion. From cat food to flea treatments, Ferdie was given the best of everything.
Watching Rob and Chantelle follow Ferdie’s every move as he bounced around their townhouse, I smiled with delight. They were incredibly patient as the kitten attacked their furniture and their hands with equal pleasure. Now Rob was thirty-two and Chantelle twenty-nine, they were at the ideal stage to make fantastic parents of a two-legged, fur-free individual some day, if the stars aligned.
Ferdie was so adorable, I was tempted to bundle him up and bring him home with us for a visit. Not that I dared say anything, since I’d let everyone know my tough line on cats these days. In the meantime, I was in for a delightful surprise with the Cleo manuscript I’d been labouring over. After I sent Allen & Unwin a few chapters, the response from Jude McGee was immediate. She loved it. Contracts were signed and a deadline for delivery of the complete manuscript was set for September. Life was getting more multi-layered by the week. I needed to get a move on if there was any chance of finishing the book on time.
As I waded through the early chapters, I realised it was nearly twenty-five years since we’d lived with a young feline. Watching Ferdie bouncing off the furniture I realised I’d forgotten how full on kittens could be.
But there was also a wedding to organise. Having worn Roman sandals to my first wedding and a half-price suit to my second, I had no idea what twenty-first century nuptials involved. Everything goes in cycles. Our parents had white weddings so my generation rebelled and had hippie ceremonies. Rob and Chantelle were part of the Generation X swing back to church bells and tulle.
I bought a wedding etiquette book, The Modern Wedding, and soon understood how World War II could’ve been avoided. If Hitler had been preoccupied with planning a Modern Wedding he’d never have got around to invading Poland.
According to The Modern Wedding, while the bride’s parents had traditionally shouldered most responsibility for a wedding, the groom’s were more involved these days. With Chantelle’s parents out of town, we obviously needed to do more than show up on the big day and have a good time.
The list of Must Do’s was daunting. I hadn’t realised that popular venues were generally booked up a year in advance. ‘Our’ wedding was only a few months away. We needed to find a venue as soon as possible. A guest list had to be drawn up, invitations designed and sent, replies recorded. Photographers and celebrants, flowers and a wedding cake had to be found. Plus cars, gift registries, hair and makeup, musicians, seating plans and table decorations. And thank you cards, gifts for bridesmaids and groomsmen. Not to mention the bridal dress. Rob and Chantelle were so busy working full time they didn’t seem to realise that if they wanted a traditional wedding they’d have to carve out their nights and weekends to accommodate a schedule and stick to it.
Philip was at a work dinner and I was engrossed in The Modern Wedding one evening when Lydia floated downstairs in a waft of incense. Meditating at 9 p.m.? I thought. She was taking it seriously. When I showed her The Modern Wedding she said she couldn’t understand the fuss. She’d rather get married on a beach. Generation Y Lydia was showing signs of swinging back in the hippie direction. Hang on a minute! Was she even thinking about marriage? Maybe her relationship with Ned was more serious than she’d let on.
Interrupting my thoughts, Lydia said she had something important to tell me. I tightened my grip on The ModernWedding. The kitchen clock pulsed a heartbeat through the room. Could we possibly be faced with simultaneously organising nuptials on the beach?
‘I’m going to Sri Lanka,’ she said.
/> Sri Lanka? The flower-power wedding evaporated.
‘You mean you’ll go once you’ve finished your studies?’ I asked.
‘No. Soon,’ she said, avoiding eye contact. ‘In a few weeks’ time.’
‘But Sri Lanka’s in the middle of a civil war!’ I gasped, dropping The Modern Wedding on the bench top.
‘I’ve met people who’ve just come back,’ she responded with the confidence only twenty-three-year-olds can muster. ‘They say it’s perfectly safe where I’m going.’
A lead weight sank through me, anchoring my feet to the floor. This couldn’t be happening. Didn’t Lydia take even a passing interest in current events? Sri Lanka had been in the throes of civil war for nearly twenty-five years.
‘Exactly where are you going in Sri Lanka?’ I asked, trying to keep emotion out of my voice.
‘The monastery.’
Of course! So this was what Lydia and her monk had been cooking up over the past four years. Why hadn’t she told me? I felt deceived. Philip had been right all along. The monk had been exerting some kind of power over our impressionable daughter.
‘There are plenty of Buddhist monasteries around Melbourne,’ I said. ‘Why do you have to go all the way to Sri Lanka?’
‘To learn more about meditation.’
‘There’s no shortage of meditation classes in this part of the world,’ I countered.
‘I’m going to help in an orphanage as well,’ she added, as if it might soften my attitude.
Admittedly it did, though only a little. Close to 30,000 Sri Lankans had lost their lives in the tsunami of December 2004. Families had been decimated. With its history of war and natural disaster, Sri Lanka had to be one of the most grief-stricken places on the planet. However, I was in no mood to sacrifice our daughter to its misery.
‘The monastery’s really remote, in the mountains in the South,’ she said, opening the fridge and slipping an organic blueberry into her mouth. ‘The war’s miles away up in the North.’
There’d been a serious gap in our daughter’s education. Surely she understood war was something people ran away from, not toward. She’d been sheltered all her life, coated in SP30 sun cream every summer and given the best education we could afford. Unlike our generation, she’d never met uncles who’d been maimed at El Alamein. Sepia photos of young men slaughtered at Gallipoli meant even less. She’d grown up in a world where supermarkets were always brimming with food. Lydia had no idea what she’d been protected from.
‘Have you seen a map of Sri Lanka?’ I asked, barely able to conceal my alarm. ‘It’s a dot in the ocean. The North and South are as close together as Melbourne and . . . Warrnambool.’
Warrnambool is a coastal town about three and a half hours’ drive away from Melbourne. We’d taken a French exchange student there to see some whales. It’d rained and our guest hadn’t been impressed.
In the face of Lydia’s silence I asked her exactly how long she intended to be away.
She was vague. Months, possibly. Months?!
‘And what does Ned think about it?’ I asked.
‘He’ll be fine without me,’ she said, studying a crack in the floorboards.
‘What about your study course? And your scholarship?’
The second hand on the kitchen clock froze. A spider sidled across the ceiling.
‘They can wait,’ she said quietly.
‘Wait?! ’ my voice rose to a quavering crescendo. ‘You mean you’re going to throw away your scholarship?! ’
Her eyes were damp and swollen. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d raised my voice at her – possibly never – but a few tears weren’t going to make me back down.
‘You don’t understand . . .’ she muttered.
Three little words every mother loves to hear.
‘This is something I need to do.’
When did young people start needing to do things? Most previous generations counted themselves lucky if they lived long enough to raise a family.
‘Why put your life at risk?’
‘Plenty of my friends are doing volunteer work overseas,’ she said with infuriating serenity, as if I was the one being difficult.
‘But there’s a war going on in Sri Lanka!’ I snapped. ‘They have bombs going off and terrorist attacks. Foreigners are being targeted. Can’t you wait till the fighting’s over? Or at least go to a country where people aren’t killing each other?’
She looked at me as if I was an inmate of a mental institution in need of medication.
‘You can’t go,’ I added. ‘I forbid it.’
Forbid? The word resonated back through decades to a similar situation, except it had occurred in another kitchen with wallpaper featuring hundreds of wicker baskets, and miniature prints of Hogarth’s London on either side of the fireplace. Mother and daughter were locked in battle, though back then I was playing the role of impossible youngster and Mum was doing the yelling. ‘You’re not even eighteen. You’re just a child!’ I remembered the anger on her breath and how I’d thought that in her teeth-gnashing, eye-rolling anguish she looked like one of Picasso’s women. Her rage worked like a pitchfork, jabbing me into a corner. ‘I forbid you to get married!’
Dad was noticeably absent while this was going on. He was probably at work, or playing chess with his friend across town. Men are masters at keeping a low profile on these occasions. Mum’s forbidding had made me all the more determined. Still, I hadn’t been heading off to a war zone.
‘The tickets are booked and paid for,’ said Lydia coldly.
Booked and paid for? I’d said exactly the same to Mum all those years ago just before my eighteenth birthday. My tickets to Britain are booked and paid for. I’m flying across the world to marry the man I love. Defy me at your peril, old woman.
Lydia’s eyes had darkened to hazel blended with olive green. Maybe it was a trick of the light. For the first time I noticed her eyes were exactly the same colour as Mum’s.
‘I’m leaving in three weeks. Good night,’ she added before fleeing upstairs.
Alone in the kitchen in anaesthetised silence, I swallowed an urge to rip plates out of the cupboard and smash them against the walls. Much as I wanted to chase Lydia upstairs, grab her by the shoulders and shake sense into her, I held back.
Lydia was determined to have her way. She’d made up her so-called mind. I knew the pattern from conflicts we’d had in the past, even over little things like choosing clothes. If I gushed enthusiasm for the pretty floral skirt, she’d inevitably want the plain linen one. The more I spurred her on, the more deeply she’d dig in her hooves.
A friend had drawn up her horoscope soon after her birth. He’d laughed and said he’d never seen anything like it. Lydia was a Taurus born in the year of the Ox and in the hour of the Ox. A triple whammy of bullishness. He said we were destined to lock horns.
I hurried to the computer and looked up Travel Warnings. It was not reassuring bedtime reading: ‘You are advised to reconsider your need to travel to Sri Lanka at this time because of ongoing civil unrest, the volatile security situation and the very high risk of terrorist attacks. Attacks could occur at any time, anywhere in Sri Lanka, including the South.’
I printed it out twice and forwarded it to Lydia by email in case she tossed the printed version in her bin.
Two hours later, Philip and I lay side by side staring at shadows on the bedroom ceiling.
‘Where do you think she got the airfare from?’ he asked.
‘Her father, probably. Hang on. Remember that money we gave her for her twenty-first?’
‘You mean the study trip to China that never eventuated.’
‘She’s not going to Sri Lanka. I’m forbidding it.’
‘Impossible,’ said Philip, the frustrating voice of reason. ‘She’s over eighteen.’
‘I’ll hide her passport.’
‘That’s not going to get us anywhere,’ he sighed.
‘She’ll get herself killed !’ I said, tugging t
he sheet into my neck and turning over to face the wall. It was all very well for Philip, I fumed. He hadn’t carried her in his womb for nine months and nursed her with milk from his own body. He wasn’t even her biological father. That was an unworthy thought, however. Even though he was Lydia’s stepfather, there’d never been any dividing lines in his affection. His was as devoted to her as he was to his biological daughter.
Still, I thought, anger rising again, why couldn’t he put his foot down and stop her?
Silent accusations hung in the darkness.
I blamed myself. If Lydia’s father and I hadn’t split up, she wouldn’t be so reckless and defiant. On the other hand, if we’d stayed together one of us would probably be dead by now and the other in prison.
I blamed Lydia. The cheek of it; sneaking off to buy airline tickets.
I blamed the monk. How dare he lure our daughter away to his war-torn island?
I blamed television travel shows that present the Third World like a theme park offering endorphin highs along with extreme sports, booze and everything else Generation Ys crave.
But I said nothing. Neither did he.
Even though Philip remained silent, he probably had accusations of his own to make. After all, whose fault was it for introducing Lydia to the monk in the first place?
He started making the whooshing noises that meant he was falling asleep. I was furious he could drop off so peacefully.
Thoughts spiralled as I lay awake. I remembered vowing I’d never behave like Mum when she’d tried to stop me going to England. Yet here I was in a similar clash of wills with my own daughter: me, convinced she was about to ruin her life; Lydia determined to go ahead and do it anyway.
Then again I shouldn’t have been surprised. Lydia sprang from a long line of headstrong women who’d found ways to upset their mothers. Before she’d married, Mum had been ‘engaged’ to another man and there’d been a scandal. Her cousin Theodora went to Paris in the 1920s and returned to live in sin with a German at the beach. Great Aunt Myrtle had smoked a pipe and advised me to do anything for love. And her mother caused ructions marching down the street of her country town demanding votes for women.
