by Jodie Moffat
Going wider, we are all in relationship with the earth. The planet is struggling. Every aspect of our environment is at peril: species, climate, ocean, air. In what way do we contribute to this? Is it possible to rest easy at night while demanding cheap goods, bargain clothing and budget flights to far-flung destinations? Those of us in the first world have some serious decisions and sacrifices to make, because elsewhere the majority lack not only food and water, but basic human rights. As global citizens we can no longer ignore this relationship. We must change our connection to our lives and resources, in order to heal our ailing ecosystem for those who come next.
And then there’s the simple matter of getting along with people, which is not always simple.
My own life is abundant with complex, marvellous relationships: with my granddaughter, with my son and his wife, my family of origin, former partners, friends, writing students, the motley crew who live in my retirement complex. Each of these connections offers joy, anxiety, comfort, solace, demands. They bring gifts I am not necessarily keen to receive: the suffering that ensues from tetchy exchanges, the angst of unreturned phone calls, times when someone else’s troubles feel self-indulgent or the complexities of self and other seem too much to bear. I try to meet hard moments with equanimity, but sometimes I just take the phone off the hook and hide. I’ve learnt, from my Zen teacher, that to ‘immediately do nothing’ is often the best response. Sometimes all that’s needed is to leave things alone.
There is no escape from the bump and grind of this life. We are born, we live, we die. All of us, headed for the boneyard. No-one exempt. This is the way things are. And in the midst of it, hell can be other people, as Jean-Paul Sartre pointed out. Or perhaps hell is ourselves. Our primary relationship is with our own hearts, bodies and minds, and this fertile, fluid inner territory abounds with contradictions. Many of us dance to a song we don’t always recognise or enjoy. Sometimes it’s difficult accepting oneself, let alone anyone else. When the shit hits the fan, can I behave towards other people in ways that reflect my beliefs? How do I deal with my shame and guilt when I stuff up? When shabbiness and shadow are revealed, the suffering can be immense.
As I have grown older, I understand more deeply that my relationship with the outer world waxes and wanes. Sometimes I feel deeply connected with other people, sometimes I don’t. This calls on me to trust the emergence of what needs to unfold. It also requires me to examine, in a clear light, the limits of what I bring to relationships as well as the limits of what I can expect. I’m judgemental, controlling, prone to impatience. I can be a hopeless listener, too keen to interrupt, to fix, to solve, or to add my troubles to the mix. I’m also loyal, trustworthy, generous and, at best, a whole lot of fun. I value my friendships, despite the fact that many of my friends are getting a bit forgetful and don’t always get back to me when I would like.
Surprisingly, I find myself with a new partner, a man of seventy. He’s a kind, gentle, decent man whose life has not been easy, surprised and delighted to be taking one final ride on the merry-go-round of love. We talk, late at night, sharing stories of our marriages, our children and grandchildren, our victories and tragedies. He looks for the similarities between us, which are many. I am more conscious of our differences, also many. Taking on a new intimate relationship later in life is both wonderful and perilous. There’s no biological or financial imperative involved, which removes certain pressures, but there are many challenges. Flexibility is important and brain plasticity has been proven, but how many new tricks are old dogs prepared to learn? With long roads of personal history behind us, it can be difficult to change one’s views and habits, yet constant adaptation is necessary if one is to forge a harmonious relationship. Some days I bow down in gratitude to this man. Other days I could pick him up by the ears and shake him. No doubt he feels the same.
At our age, the stakes seem higher. Our aim is to be lovers at the deepest level, or why bother? With time so precious, meaningless flings and loveless marriages are no longer viable options. Together we explore the tender space between us, carving out a new territory, our own form of relationship, somewhere between married and single. It is vulnerable territory, at times almost unbearable. At best, it offers the freedom of room to move, along with companionship, comfort, physical pleasure and intellectual stimulation. At worst, we find ourselves lost in treacherous places of misunderstanding. Sometimes we are two gracious adults, relating with wisdom and ease. At other times, broken children, thrashing around in our own damage, not understanding the depths of our own wounding, blind to the frailties of the other.
In a primary relationship, ups and downs are more obvious, but pleasure and pain are manifest in all relationships. Sometimes we get on well with other people, sometimes we do not. In the end we’re all just bozos on the bus, doing the best we can. As elders, we reconcile ourselves with our lives, nourishing the connections we have, whilst mourning relationships no longer available to us. It’s an inescapable truth that grief is the price we pay for love. No matter how hard we try to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic, one day we will bury the ones we love, or they will bury us, except in the unlikely eventuality that we all go down together. The whole shebang has been on fire since the word go, as Annie Dillard reminds us, and it is no wonder that we feel screwed up a lot of the time and need to watch junk TV and eat yoghurt vacantly in front of the refrigerator, spilling the odd blob on the floor.2
In my thirties, I wrote the following:
Sometimes I think I am so tired because I am a woman in a time and a place where no-one knows who they are any more, that I am utterly worn out from thrashing around amongst so many discourses that all my strength is gone. For I am many, multiple, fractured. I am fat lady / thin lady / mother / lover / lone ranger / student / suburban housewife / consumer / ecologist / radical / conformist / hippie / yuppie / feminist / wife / shygirl / loudmouth / hedonist – and that is just a few of me, and I am tired.3
Thirty years later, still tired, I am all those things, and more. Grandmother, elder, Zen student, artist, sister, aunt, cook, friend, wise woman, fool. Human being in relationship with self and other: sky, tree, planet, child, ocean, teapot, moon and star.
So, what have I learnt along the way? As much as possible, to stop buying things. To live the simple life I proclaim, with a spirit of contentment, thus aligning my behaviours with my deepest values. To enjoy my life of divine ordinariness. To treat those I meet kindly, because we are all struggling, although some disguise it better than others. I have learnt that to be human is to be always in a state of flux, and that if I can live as change, as grace, my heart will be happier, despite global warming, shark attacks, terrorism and child poverty, despite my bung knee and my tendency towards melancholy. I aim to act for the wider good, while realising that my jurisdiction is limited. I try to be harmonious with my friends, even and especially when it proves difficult. I’ve realised it’s not too late to have a happy childhood because, despite my own ragged past, I now get to play runaway horses and magic castles with my granddaughter. There’s not much percentage in looking back, regretting old loves, nursing ancient hurts. Wiser to leave the past alone. Again and again, I farewell everything, including my ideas about myself. Staying current, inhabiting this moment, each moment, as the one and only real thing. Laying full claim to it, this precious, difficult, dizzying existence.
Notes
Thanks to Zoe Thurner for her great line.
1 Thích Nhất Hanh, Awakening of the Heart: Essential Buddhist Sutras and Commentaries. Berkeley:Parallax Press, 2012.
2 Annie Dillard, ‘On Foot in Virginia’s Roanoake Valley’, The Abundance. London: Canongate Books, 2016.
3 Brigid Lowry, ‘Fat Lady’, Summer Shorts 2. Fremantle: Fremantle Press, 1994.
What took me so long? — Pam Menzies
High heel shoes remain in their boxes, my hair is a puff of undyed white. I’ve never felt so free. Family, friends and being true to myself are what matter now. I no l
onger care what people think – I’m standing up and speaking out. My father would turn in his grave.
It’s sunny but windy when we arrive in Sydney’s Martin Place. We’re here to prepare for a rally. Truckloads of men are jackhammering in the space we’ve booked and we haven’t a clue what to do next. It’s a new experience – I’m seventy and have never organised a protest. Three weeks before, I’d said to my friend Jan, a seasoned campaigner, I was cranky at the lack of political action on climate change. I told her it was the one thing I was prepared to take a stand on. A week later she phoned and said, ‘If we are going to do anything we have to do it now before the July election; after that no-one will be listening. What do you say to the twenty-second of June?’
I grew up in the 50s, when girls spoke only when spoken to and we were warned ‘not to have tickets on ourselves’. We knew our place, and never called our parents – or any other adult – by their first names. School was a mixed experience. At Port Kembla Primary, I ducked as Mrs Cross let fly with inkwells, and didn’t recover from Mrs Moe’s criticism of my chain stitch sampler. She told me I would never sew because I was left-handed. (She was right about that, though neither she nor I could have foreseen that I would marry a man who did all my sewing.) The weekly tests that decided where you sat in class left me terrified of exams. I clung to one of the four back desks with two Sues and a Robyn: fourth on that slippery slope was as far as I was prepared to fall.
To gather support for our demonstration, we decide to target older people, as we think it’s time our age group got active about climate. If we are willing to protest, politicians on both sides won’t be able to opt out by saying it’s a young person’s issue. Jan fills in the rally permission form at her local police station and we’re surprised how easy it is to get going. Neither of us has much idea about modern day protest strategies, so I ask young family members and their friends for advice. They tell us we need to design a slogan, set up an online petition on change.org, email our friends, start a Facebook page and above all have a photograph of ourselves taken. Apparently no-one will be interested unless there’s a photo. We start with that as we find the rest challenging, though who knows why a photo of white-haired women is necessary.
Jan lives in Moss Vale in NSW; I live for most of the time in Sydney, but my husband and I own a small house on bushy acres nearby in the Southern Highlands, which we visit every few weeks and that’s where we happen to be when the urge to get active hits. John, my hobby artist husband, finds an old canvas in the shed and whitewashes it. It’s a bit rough, but will have to do. He paints on it the words THERE IS NO PLAN(ET) B, a popular slogan suggested by my daughter’s friend Margo who works in advertising.
We call into Jan and Robert’s on the way back to Sydney, find a colouring maple as a backdrop and Robert photographs us holding the sign. It’s an au naturel affair with no attention to hair, make-up or clothes. We’re running a ‘what you see is what you get’ campaign.
When I log on to change.org, I quail. This is going global; what if I mess it up? We’ve thought of a heading – ‘Grandparents For Action On Climate’ – and Robert has set up a gmail account for us. I follow instructions and am pleased when I manage to upload our maple tree picture and write a brief explanation about what we want from protesters and politicians. This online stuff is not too hard, I’m thinking, but realise I’ve only half done the job when an internet friend emails: ‘Where’s the accompanying letter to send to politicians with petition names?’
In sixth class, I escaped the strict confines of primary school for a secondary school in Wollongong, on acres of land with a creek running through. I was supremely happy in that idyll, yet nobody there encouraged me to aim high. Turning out ladies was the aim of the institution: our days were filled with elocution lessons, community service, gloves and hats, hockey and hurdles, and an eccentric collection of teachers. The history teacher’s brother had been in the desert with Lawrence of Arabia and we spent hours obsessing about the romance of it all. In my final year the career advisor suggested teaching or physiotherapy. ‘No thanks,’ I told her. I had a father who believed sending girls to university was a waste of taxpayers’ money because they would be married soon afterwards. I knew I needed to be charged up about something before he would change his mind, and I wasn’t. Without other plans, I began working at the local hospital in the pathology department. I quite liked biology but my passion was literature.
There were reasons for my compliance. My choice of a non-vocational university degree would have displeased my father and I was very close to my mother as a child. We enjoyed the same things – animals, reading, music – and loved talking for hours. I believed it was up to me to make up for past sadness that occurred before I was born. In the first year of her marriage, her parents died and she had a stillborn son. A year later, a second son was born deaf. My mother was also preoccupied with being abandoned and often said, ‘Everyone I’ve loved has gone away.’ To go to university, I needed to live in the city and, at seventeen, I felt guilty about leaving her.
There’s a fortnight to go before the protest. The next step is to persuade friends and acquaintances to join us in Martin Place. We send emails to everyone we know. The Knitting Nannas group from the Southern Highlands are coming, Ali, from Robert’s choir, has agreed to lead us in the singing and a small core group of friends have agreed to be there. Other friends who support us, but for a variety of reasons can’t come, send positive messages and help in different ways. In response to the email barrage, however, there’s mostly silence.
Maybe I’m still seeking answers for the lack of support from my age group when I venture into the Men’s Shed near my gym a week before the protest. Four men are working. One is using a ruler to measure a piece of wood. There are chairs waiting for repair and there’s a busy, convivial, under-control feel about the space.
‘What have you got there?’ one asks me.
‘A flyer, we’re holding a protest.’
‘What about?’
‘Grandparents, we want immediate action on climate.’
‘I’m more interested in what’s going to happen to my super,’ one says.
‘But you must care about the climate. Especially for your grandchildren.’
‘How can I do anything about that?’ says another.
‘Tim Flannery has positive ideas in his new book and lists alternative energy sources.’
‘Oh him, what would he know?’
‘Oh well, I’d better let you get on with your work.’
‘Give it to me,’ one says, ‘I’ll put it up.’
Why did I go in there? Why were they unhelpful?
My husband suggests: ‘When older men don’t know the answer they stonewall to close down discussion.’
Two years after leaving school, I escaped my father’s orbit and began working at Sutherland Hospital, where I met Sandra. She was my age, but light-years ahead when it came to decision-making. In charge of the biochemistry department, she drove an MG sports car and organised a loan to buy an apartment – unheard of in the 60s for a woman on her own. We flatted together – no tables or bedsteads, just mats and cushions. My father brought his own chair when he visited with my mother. Sandra taught me many things: to drive a car, to be more assertive and how to have fun as a young woman. She went on to study medicine.
For our protest Jan and I need to find a speaker with credentials. We’re relieved when Michael Mobbs agrees. He is known as ‘the off-the-grid guy’ and has written books on sustainable housing. From media, on the whole, there’s a big fat silence. I’ve written to ABC, Seven, Nine and ABC Radio – nothing, though Lauren Strode from Southern Highlands News is interested, and Elizabeth Farrelly, a journalist with Fairfax, writes a supportive email. A few days before the rally, I walk past Sydney’s Supreme Court and see vans humming; they’re from all the major television channels. Men are busy with cables, roof satellite dishes are swishing this way and that picking up signals and I almost dare to hand ou
t my protest flyer, though know it would be pointless. I find out later they’re covering the sentencing of a corrupt former cop.
My journey towards a stronger self-belief was helped by my husband John, whom I met at Sutherland Hospital. Two years and one child into our marriage, he said, ‘You love reading, why don’t you study for an external degree through New England University?’ At the same time I met Barbara who was finishing a master’s degree in education while producing many children. She was living a life I aspired to. And it turned out that reading, writing, talking about books and later, at Sydney University, studying performance, were a perfect fit for me. All through the 70s I soaked up words. Reading Anne Summers’ Damned Whores and God’s Police made me bolshy for a while – the blinkers were off, and Germaine Greer completed the awakening. I began channelling my new knowledge. In Sydney, while my children were young, I worked part-time as an information officer at a community centre and came across local activism. There was a committee which organised after-school care for children and services for older people isolated in their homes, which was all new at the time. I also went to Women’s Electoral Lobby meetings with my next-door neighbour Gillian, and joined the local P & C.
The day of the protest, Michael Mobbs suggests I ask the jackhammering workers if they will take their lunchbreak at twelve. They’re quite happy about that and amble to the footpath to check out the commotion on Macquarie Street where taxi drivers are driving past, blowing their horns. They are agitating for better conditions for cabbies in support of the group gathered outside NSW State Parliament House across the road. We realise we’re in the middle of protest central: groups of police are there, the taxi drive-past is slowing traffic and we decide to use the mood to begin. Before we do, two policemen come to check our credentials, little knowing they’re making our day: we’re bona fide now. With Bill McKibben’s American campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline in mind, I’m hoping for drama, but these men are young and benign and say they wish all protesters were like us. There are fifty of us gathered and we shelter next to the Reserve Bank – in the sun and mostly out of the wind. We check out each other’s posters. Anna’s NO COAL MINING! created by her actor husband has a theatrical flair to it. We’re impressed by Lyn’s large banner that calls on us to be CUSTODIANS and PROTECT OUR LAND, WATER AND FUTURE.
