Crying over Q and As

Some interesting questions from Bev at Sunday Stealing but I'm feeling recalcitrant and might do it on another day of the week.  So it's Tuesday and boy-oh-boy, what seemed like a fun Q and A has become quite emotional for me.

1. An unforgettable day in my life.

When my daughter was born.  She started sending me rather strong signals of her intentions to enter the world at a dinner party on Friday night.  It was all rather exciting and I was happy to share it with the other four guests.  Our prenatal classes had informed us that early contractions are NOT like in the movies, with water gushing and being rushed into Emergency two minutes later, but to stay calm and time them.  These were only occurring every twenty minutes or so.

At home that night though, I couldn't sleep and sat up buffered by every ornamental pillow we'd normally toss off the bed when we climbed into it.  I wrote down the time and duration of each contraction and by Saturday morning, they were every ten minutes.  I still knew to stay calm as our teacher had told us that hospitals sent many excited new parents back home until the contractions were every five minutes.

I tried to stand up against our mantelpiece and look nonchalant as Dean sold our tiny little Suzuki to a local florist, not wanting her to know that a) I was having contractions and b) they hurt like hell.

By 8pm Saturday evening, they were five minutes apart. The Melbourne Women's and Children's hospital was still located in Carlton then and a stone's throw from Lygon Street - the busiest street for bars, restaurants and shops in Melbourne.  Dean drove around the block several times trying to find a parking spot. 

Eventually we saw one, but so did another car - I wound down the window of our 'brand new' ex-government Mitsubishi station wagon we'd bought the week earlier in preparation for parenthood, and asked them if, because I was in labour, if we could take the spot.  They kindly agreed and instant karma was bestowed on them as the spot in front of ours also became vacant.

Once in hospital, the contractions were stronger but I wasn't dilated enough.  To avoid all the rather icky stuff, it is best to summarise the experience as having had three different marvelous midwives help us through it before ending their respective shifts. Epidurals, vomiting from bearing down so much and seeing poor Dean's exhausted, sleeping face smooshed up against the steel grey side of the bedside drawer.  By lunchtime, our baby's heart rate was starting to fade and I then started living a Hollywood movie scene when they rushed me into surgery, Dean wearing what looked like a shower cap and tears in his eyes and he ran alongside us.  Our daughter finally emerged via forceps and me numbed from the waist down in case a Caesarean was needed, at 2.15pm on Sunday afternoon.

She was blue, but rapidly turned pink, with a thin coating of strawberry blonde hair.  We'd made a human being!  I was also selfishly glad that I was still too numb to be moved because the infamous tar-like meconium poop she produced was left to be seen and dealt with by poor Dean.

That was 23rd May 1999.  A week overdue, so if you're into astrology, our expected Taurus became a Gemini.

  

2. My favorite snacks

Chocolate.  In my chocolate reviewing days, I was into dark chocolate, but after a decade in Switzerland, it's milk chocolate mostly.  Not the particularly posh stuff either.  Lindt never lets me down, nor the number that appears on my bathroom scales.  However, nothing chocolate 'flavoured' because that's always a very poor substitute and a disappointment, especially chocolate milk, cake or ice-cream.  

3. My biggest fashion accessory

My gold bangles (three) and perfume.  I've adored bangles (plastic, metal, silver, fake gold, real gold) even as a child and my parents gave me a gold one in 1990 and Dean gave me two others in 2005 which was our tenth wedding anniversary.  I don't take 'em off any more after one once broke, so I'm an automatic candidate for an airport security pat-down.

Perfume.  Unbrushed hair and teeth, baggy tracksuit pants, old running t-shirt and stained parka are my 'go to' clothes during this never-ending French lockdown, yet I still give myself a spritz.  My lifetime favorite is the original Chloe that I've used for over 30 years.  It's hard to find and I don't like the newer versions, so Tiffany, good old White Musk from the Body Shop, Yardley's Violet, Chanel No 19, 4077 Cologne and a few of the Burberry's are also in use.  Chloe is for the bestest of best days.

4. My biggest celebrity crush

C. Thomas Howell.  Ponyboy in The Outsiders.  That adorable face....!  I spent a lot of my hard-earned babysitting money to buy imported UK teen mags like 'Tiger Beat' in order to find posters of him.  He didn't reach the fame or cinematic heights of most of his Outsiders costars but that face.....

5. One hobby I would like to learn

I would have said 'learn French' but my old brain is always working in English. I can't help but automatically read every label, street sign and, to his great annoyance, Dean's iPad when he's sitting next to me.  I love alliteration and thinking up things to write about, so when I did try to learn French my brain just....turned itself off.  I know that you must give things a good hard try and nothing comes easy and you live in France and you're lacking confidence and, and, and.....  If it could be 'magicked' into my brain I'd be thrilled.  

Maybe a drama class for oldies?  A fantasy would be to occasionally get to play an unglamorous but rude old lady who couldn't care less about what swear words she gets to say at shocked youngers.  That seems like fun.

6. My OCD habits

Harrison Ford was a carpenter by trade and he once mentioned in an interview that he can't help straightening books or magazines on coffee tables so that they're in a straight line with the edges of the table.  I do that too.  Even before 'happy birthday' hand washing timings of Covid-19, my hands resembled scaly claws due to the dozens and dozens of times I wipe down the kitchen counter, sink top, table, coffee making machine, spills etc.  The worst decision I've made was deciding on a stainless steel splashback for the stove top and sink because the calcium-rich water here shows up every single drop and I seem to spend every single moment wiping them off.

7. If I could eat one last meal

Dean cooks an amazing spiced coated chicken schnitzel that he serves with twice cooked roasted potatoes, onions, carrots and garlic. The soft roasted garlic oozes out of the skin and doesn't give you the dreaded 'ten feet distance away from me, please' breath afterwards.  Add steamed broccoli and fresh asparagus and sweet corn.  Dessert could be a good baked cheesecake or carrot cake struggling under the weight of the cream cheese icing.  Add a generous handful of fresh raspberries.  Moet to wash it all down with.

8. Working on my fitness

Both of my achilles and both of my (I don't want to say 'bone spurs' because I don't want to have ANYTHING IN COMMON with Donald Trump ever) plantar fasciitis thingies have finally ended my running.  Even with a treadmill on a much slower speed and planned shorter distances, these flare up and I spend more time off recovering than doing any actual running.  The treadmill is a good place to drape bed sheets to dry though.

I have a fitness DVD by Jillian Michael called the 'Thirty Day Shred' that I could probably recite word for word, but after the end of Lockdown One, I lost interest.  My thighs sighed with relief.

During Lockdown Two, we adopted Felix.  As a four year old dog, he's got the body of an athlete in his prime and, as an apartment dweller with a balcony for a garden, he needs and deserves long walks and the opportunity to explore and have a deep think for several seconds before deciding to pee on the wild chives in front of him.  This has been a genuine gift for me.  No, not the obsessive excrement eating or raging barks at elderly folk, but the distances we end up walking each day.  I'm not seeing any amazing weight loss but, unlike Felix, no-one controls what I get in my food bowl per day, so that's on me.

9. What I spend money on

Apart from the mortgage, utilities, credit card and groceries?  Wool for the scarves I've been knitting as a LGBTQI fundraiser.  You can see some of them here at  https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/EverythingWoolBeOk.  

For some reason it's stuck in AUD prices which makes postage estimates from France (especially during Covid) almost impossible.  I've had better luck selling them privately.  I can't knit anything fancy or know how to follow a pattern but the repetitive nature of knitting is comforting and helps stop me from picking at my fingernails quite so often. Elmo's been an enthusiastic model, but as soon as I use up my last batch of wool I'm going to donate them to the French Federation - https://federation-lgbt.org/

10. My favorite recipe

No single one, as I'm not an enthusiastic cook, which means that sensible things like evening meals I have boring 'go tos' like spaghetti bolognese, various soups, various stir-fries and quiche. That's why Dean is the chef in our house: he enjoys it and is particularly good at it.  Favourite recipes for me always involve sweets.  That said, I'm still baking our lockdown bread because I like the hands-on habit of it and the process involved.  But being asked to 'bring dessert' which means make a white chocolate and blueberry cheesecake, tiramisu, pavlova or carrot cake means a happy Saturday afternoon in the kitchen listening to ABBA as I bake.

11. The best part of each season

I'll apply my European view on these, as the seasons are much more distinctive from each other than where I came from.

Summer - fields of sunflowers, outdoor drinking, long hours of daylight

Autumn - the beautiful changes of the leaves.  Cooler nights which are better for sleeping.  Seeing cute little pumpkins sitting on ancient stone door steps and fences as decorations.

Winter - Snow skiing (if not shut down due to Covid as it has been this past season), seeing robins hop along the path ahead of where Felix and I are walking, Christmas decorations and traditions making more sense in the cold weather.

Spring - the violets, daffodils and snowdrops that have somehow survived the winter and emerge into the still not-very-reliable sunshine.  Blossoms.  Felix trotting on green grass dotted with tiny white daisies. Being able to sit out on our balcony again.

12. A life lesson I’ve learned

There's always a tiny grain of truth in stereotypes.  They can be over-generalised and sometimes cruel, but they expose a commonality that a lot of us recognise.  None of us want to be BE a stereotype, but we can sure recognise them.

13. My inspiration to blog

I did it pretty regularly as a way to recover from a full-on breakdown in 2005, before stopping in 2013. My daughter was then a teenager and it didn't seem right to mention her at that time of her life as it was her own.  Plus, my older brother's wife emailed me to say that she'd always disliked me; didn't know why but had decided to therefore cut me, my husband and then thirteen year old child out of her life forever.  Up until then she had been a regular reader and commenter on the blog and I figured that she didn't deserve to see what I was thinking or getting up to if she was OK with making my daughter cry every birthday when she realised each time that her aunt (and uncle) had completely written her out of their lives for no reason that has ever been explained to her, me or the rest of my family.  

My daughter is grown up now; at university in Edinburgh and I'm trying to see if I can write stuff that isn't just relying on what a silly mummy I am.  Therefore, starting up again has been a bit slow and painful. I'm not sure who still reads blogs as about 99% of my old links have disappeared and tiktok just doesn't seem to be the right option for creaky old me.  I didn't know if I had anything worth sharing or saying - I still don't know - but I feel somehow, as though I want something of me put somewhere. If nothing else, having stuff to think about does help with my depression, self confidence and wondering just how and where I fit. 

14. What’s inside my closet?

Pretty boring clothes, to be honest.  Maybe two dresses, but the rest are shirts, t-shirts and jackets. As a teen/early twenty something, I was very much into fashion, but for me it was out of anxiety.  I didn't have the movie star looks of my mother and it was my friend Jo the guys flocked to, not me.  Fashion felt like a teeny tiny way to at least look the part.  After doing the two-year working holiday stint in London, it was travel, rent and cider that was more important to me.  These days, I just want my clothing choices to ensure that no-one runs away from me screaming.

15. Let me brag a minute.

You've got me on a down day, unfortunately.  I have so much to be thankful for, but when the 'Big D' (my sad attempt at nullifying the effects of depression by giving it a disrespectful nickname) kicks in, it can seem like I'm dragging one foot behind the other, stretching my facial muscles to adequately resemble the socially acceptable expression and keep it up until bedtime.  The good thing is that these days or weeks don't last forever.  It has taken me a lot of time, mistakes and incredible personal pain to finally understand that.  

So, maybe my 'brag' is that yes, I have depression.  And yes, it does define me - how can it not?  It is a part of me and sometimes wields a much larger and more exhaustive control over me than I'd like.  Other days I'm only dimly aware of it, but am never in doubt of its existence or that it's lurking there, always waiting and watching.  Maybe the best advice I can give myself - and lord knows I try to - is to say what I'd say to anyone I loved who was suffering.  

"What would you tell your friend?" They'd invariably come up with some pretty decent responses and I'd say, "well, if it's good enough for your friend, it's good enough for you."  Perhaps that advice is something to brag about.

Take ASIANS OUT to lunch

You know that awful feeling after backing out a satisfactorily big turd, only for the water to splash back and hit you in the bum?

Well, back in the eighties, Australia still had an unfortunate number of these human butt splashes who decided that Asians emigrating to Australia were a problem.  Never mind that we’d taken over and almost destroyed the dozens of indigenous people’s cultures or welcomed the Greeks and Italians after they fled the desolation of World War II, apparently the traumatised Vietnamese and intrepid Chinese were just a tad too much.

One of these mental amoebas spray painted ‘ASIANS OUT’ on a wall near Rundle Street where it was guaranteed to get a lot of attention.  Not long after, an anonymous champion added a few words so that it read: ‘Take ASIANS OUT to lunch!’  That edited graffiti stayed there for years and was a pleasant reminder that racists are far outnumbered by kinder and more decent people.

In 2001, we were having a family BBQ with my husband’s side of the family at our house in Adelaide.  Dean was outside taking care of the chops and sausages and I was inside with my two-year-old daughter, her 6-month-old cousin, my two sisters-in-law and his mother.  We did not see each other often, but that was due to an acrimonious upbringing and painful divorce two decades before I was on the scene.

I happened to mention that my older brother, let’s call him R, had just got engaged.  He had met an experimental microbiologist who had originally come from Singapore but had made Australia her home since gaining her PhD.

With that fairly innocuous conversation over, Dean’s sister, let’s call her A, started doing a form of muttered whispering that never, ever involves saying anything nice.  I ignored it the first time, focusing my attention on the baby and my own toddler.

A tried again, a tiny bit louder, but low enough that she could deny if I claimed that she had said anything racist.  I stopped what I was doing and looked straight at her.  “Sigh, mutter mutter mutter, Asians taking jobs away from Australians….”

“What did you say?”

A said it louder this time, with an expression daring me to respond.

I thought for a few seconds. “Why do you think like that?”

The answer was not one from the KKK textbook.  Instead, she ranted on that I was taunting her; making fun of her single status by bragging that my brother was about to get married.

“Eh?”

She went on to say that she had in fact gone on a single date with my brother, R, in 1988.  She refused my explanation that a) I had not remembered that fact; and b) I was not with Dean at the time.  Somehow, in the thirteen years of work, overseas adventures, marriage, motherhood and general living life, I was supposed to remember that R had asked her out once.

But then I *did* remember.  He told me about it afterwards.  “I tried to make conversation like, oh your mum is really nice, but she shot back with, I hate her.”

“Dean’s a mate of mine and...” 

“I can’t stand him.”

It was a disaster on all counts and he, of course, did not request a second date.

But that was 1988.  Now A was on her feet, spouting all sorts of hateful nonsense about Asian immigrants and their place being nowhere near Australia.

Dean’s Mum and other sister sat cowed on the sofa.  We knew that A often verbally abused them both and sometimes hit them, with Dean having to get out of bed in the middle of the night to step in or call the police.

The trouble for A, is that I am not as petite as her mother or sister.  I am five foot seven in flat shoes and was then in training for a half marathon.  I had also grown up with two hyperactive brothers and knew how to wrestle.  

“How dare you say those things.  I will not have anyone in my house say those things about other people or my brother’s fiancée.”

She lunged towards me and I lunged right back.  This surprised her a little because her usual, smaller prey were more defenceless and not able to adequately defend themselves.  As I was furiously deciding between bestowing a dead leg or a sharp slap to the face, Dean had heard the yelling from outside and was now separating us with what he had on hand – a greasy pair of BBQ tongs.

He firmly gripped A by the shoulders and walked her to the front door and into her car.  She drove off, still yelling obscenities, this time at me and not the Singaporean fiancée she had never met.

About a week later, we saw her familiar yellow Ford laser drive up our street at midnight before hearing “you stuck up cunt” and a beer bottle smashed on our front steps.  Over the next few years, we would occasionally receive a phone call from A which said guff like ‘You’re going to pay for this’ or ‘you think you’re so much better than me but you’re a piece of shit,’ before abruptly hanging up.

It was only at Dean’s mother’s funeral in 2008 that she approached me and said, “Well, I guess I should say sorry to you.”

“Yeah, I guess you should.”  I felt sorry for her by then.  Her bitterness and determination to blame all her sadness and loneliness on events based long in the past had destroyed her.  She had alienated everyone in her life and was being actively avoided by everyone at the post memorial afternoon tea. I cuddled then nine-year old daughter up against me and smiled across the room at Dean who was chatting to his aunties.

As the years rolled on, R married WC and she was a welcomed family member to all our gatherings.

In 2012, our daughter was almost thirteen years old and in the grips of a frighteningly dark depression and self-loathing that Dean and I were desperately struggling to understand.  During our Christmas visit to Australia, WC witnessed some of her behaviour and decided to lecture her, explaining that she only gives people ‘three strikes’ and then they are out.  Out of her life forever.

Our daughter wondered if WC’s parents had applied that same rule to her and was assured that they had.  This did not sit well with the many stories we had heard about the fights with her sister and troublemaking they got up to, but as guests for a couple of days in R and WCs home, our daughter had to suck it up.

A few days later, Dean and I drove our daughter to the children’s hospital in Adelaide because she felt suicidal.  The shame I felt – and still feel, writing this eight years later - at not believing her will stay with me forever.  With psychiatric help and hindsight of my own, I can barely touch on the exhaustion of trying to manage what I thought was her unceasing hatred of Dean and I and the despair we felt at seeing her unceasing pain and not knowing how to help or reassure her of our love which was destroying us all.

In short, it was an exceedingly difficult trip ‘home’ to Australia.

Five months later in 2013, I received this email from R’s wife, WC.  It has been edited for brevity and relevance.

Subject title: Final letter to the Locket

Hi Kath,

You have not done anything to hurt me.

The plain truth is: You to me, is like pumpkin to you.

I have tried for 12 years to like you.

I do not agree with 99% of your decision, do not approve of your behaviour.

We do not share the same taste in everything (even chocolate, you love creme eggs which is the only chocolate I will not eat), don't share the same outlook. I do not enjoy our time together.

My motto is: Life is too short to pretend to like someone or to waste time in doing things I do not enjoy.  So, I do not see the point of continuing our relationship.

Simple fact is you are struck off my friend/family list. I made my decision and announced it to your parents, your brother and his wife and your brother R.  I did not ask them to do the same because I neither need approval nor support from anyone for my action.

Yes, I am selfish, arrogant, intolerant, ungracious; so, it is no loss to you then for me not to contact you any further. 

Yes, I could do the 'normal' thing, just simply make up excuses and avoid future contact (e.g. too much work to go to Victor Harbor during Xmas, feeling unwell to go for dinner etc).

However, I respect your parents too much to lie to them and they will see through it anyway.

That is the thing - you haven't done anything specifically wrong to me. So, there is no wrong to correct, and no side to take for your parents. I don't wish to have any further discussion, your email will remain blocked.

Analogy: you don't have to justify to people why don't you eat pumpkin, so I don't have to justify to anyone why don't I associate with Locketts.

You have a great life, I know you will.

Sincerely,

WC

So, essentially, she cut me out of her – and therefore my older brother’s life - and not associating with ‘Locketts’ presumably meant that Dean and our daughter were also dead to her.

In May 2013 when our daughter turned fourteen years old, she cried.  Somehow, she hoped that Auntie WC and Uncle R would see that their problem was with me.  she was just a struggling kid, still growing and learning, so surely they’d at least send her a birthday card.  They did not.

They didn’t send her a card for Christmas, or for her fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth or twenty first birthdays either.  She stopped crying by her sixteenth.

Our daughter is approaching twenty-two years old now and her wisdom, intelligence, humour, kindness and beauty astound me every single time I see her in person or on facetime.  She’s currently stuck in lockdown as a student at Edinburgh uni and always wants us to show her what Felix the dog is up to in our apartment.  She earned a spectacularly high mark for her International Baccalaureate and the major award at school for being the academically-gifted student who also actively cared for and advocated for others.  WC and R know none of this.

R and WC also aren’t aware of the great work that Dean is doing in Geneva, the project he has so long fought for and successfully concluded with a new one just about to start.  His love and kindness for me as I struggled and continue to struggle with anxiety and depression.  His admiration and love for his daughter as they compare recipes over the internet and his commitment to helping new colleagues settle into life in a new country and to get fair conditions for his staff.

WC and R have missed all of that.  The few times we’ve made it to Australia, they are absent, revolted by our presence.  When my mother turned eighty years old in September, my little brother set up two iPads on the table by the birthday cake – one for us to speak to mum and one for them to speak to her.  I dearly wish they had set up two different times for the calls as it just emphasised the irreparable split in our family and made me feel so very sad afterwards.

The powerlessness I feel at being loathed enough to be written off as a human being, along with the man I love most in the world and my beautiful child is so isolating and heart breaking.  My parents tell me that R and WC have refused to give them the reason for our exile and as her email suggests, they would not listen to me even if I did try to contact them for an explanation.  My younger brother doesn’t want any trouble, nor do my parents, so we three here in Geneva just have to accept that we are the outsiders and it’s because of me.  Not Dean, nor our daughter, but me.

I’m no Royal watcher, but the news about the concern about the colour of baby Archie’s skin and the refusal to help Meghan get treatment for her mental distress was shocking.  No-one could dispute those instances as being anything but inhumane and callous.  But the one that punched me in the gut?  Prince Charles refusing to take his son Harry’s phone calls.

How cold.  How despicably cruel.  His son wanted to protect his family and leave the duties required of him if he stayed a royal.  His father had treated his Firm-sanctioned virgin bride Diana with thinly veiled contempt whilst continuing to have an affair with Camilla and give voice to his desire to act as her tampon.  After the inevitable divorce, Charles and Camilla simply carried on happily with their romance as Diana was hounded to death escaping from the paparazzi.

Yet Chuck doesn’t want to speak to his youngest son who was only twelve when his mother died and did not wish a similar fate for his own wife.  

After seeing snippets of ‘that’ interview with Oprah, it made me think back to the almost brawl I had with A at lunch twenty years ago, wishing that I had been given the time to get a punch in before Dean intervened.  

Knowing what I know now about the person I defended, would I have changed anything?  

The answer is no.