of grace, dignity, and other things I am not familiar with

I tried to embody grace and dignity at the airport arrivals hall, but whoops when boyfriends turn the corner  after six weeks of no sighty or no touchy, well-laid plans have been long thrown out the door. I think I actually skipped over the institutional-white tiles of Brisbane International. I couldn’t stop grinning, and after I entangled myself from a well-overdue embrace, I remembered that poor old Dan was with two friends who I should also give appropriate welcoming gestures to. I offered a much-received lift home, for the non-traveller-friendly hour of 11pm.

I grinned all the way home.

mothering Europe

Mum and I after exactly one beer at Oktoberfest, mum having drunk too much and me not enough.

Traveling with one’s own mother on a relaxing three and a half week sightseeing trip of Europe comes with its own hazards. If we don’t see each other for at least half a year, that would be just fine. I didn’t realise until we’d arrived home that I’d had to hold back the saltier vocabulary that I’m accustomed to trotting out. When frolicking amongst my age-appropriate housemates immediately after returning, I used as many F-bombs as possible, a little over-ecstatic to be amongst people who weren’t 70 years old. The holiday was planned as a belated self-indulgent treat to ourselves for reaching 30 and 70, respectively.

I also did not expect to have to nudge her awake each night to stop her snoring, nor have to explain the significance of major landmarks (“So, what’s Versailles, anyway?”). She did come up with some inappropriate commentary for serious landmarks (See: Dachau’s crematorium where mum suggested to me that the ovens looked like pizza ovens; the most visually apt but completely inappropriate simile of all time). It was awfully frustrating to be the sole organiser of this holiday, from what towns we were visiting, to where we stayed. Mum was more than happy to let me be her one-person tour guide which was initially fine, but when even choosing restaurants and which direction we were walking in was left to me (“So, left or right mum?” “No, don’t put that kind of decision on me!”), it did kind of become kind of stressful. 

It was embarassing – no, mortifying –  to have one’s own mother outdrink her at the biggest drinking festival in the world, Oktoberfest. Unfortunately, Oktoberfest is dedicated to the one alcoholic beverage I detest — beer — and while I ordered – and drank – a one-litre stein, my mum drank hers faster than I could politely sip and then mask the taste with a plate of chips.

Part of the selling point of this holiday for mum was the golden opportunity to share what she tantalisingly labeled “family secrets” with me, picturing some sunlit cafe and some conspiratorial discussions between us. They weren’t quite the cute anecdotes I was expecting, and was so floored with its unexpectedness that I was in tears. It’s the kind of revelation that fuels far more confessional blogs than my own.  

However, a bonus: despite being rejected by two travel insurance companies, and under clear instructions via small print to avoid Hiking at all costs, mum tottered up all manner of stairs and down Bavarian Alpine walking tracks. The benefit of having a travel partner that needs to take a breather after every set of twenty or so steps is that when one is also puffed but determined not to show it, one can stop with one’s mum under the guise of keeping her company. I freaking hate stairs, I would declare to her, making sure to keep the F-word in check. 

It was an awesome holiday. I will eventually get around to telling you why.

other reasons not yet outlined

I may have been too simplistic in my reasons as to why I haven’t written properly for some time. I have become obsessed in the pursuit of the classic novel, a task I gave myself at the start of the year. I realised my pile of Books to Read was getting larger and larger, and I consciously banned myself from reading anything that wasn’t going to better myself in some way.** Although that eliminated some of my pile, I inadvertently began adding much more to the list. I have therefore created an exclusive selection criteria for only the best the world of literature has to offer – the perennial tomes on the Top 100 lists, Penguin classics, difficult numbers which have sat on my bookshelves for some time, only their back covers perused. If other people think I should read it and have managed to justify it according to my snobbish criteria, I have added to the pile. The nature of the pile is that it sits ten-deep next to my bedside table. Books on the bottom of the pile have actually been there since January, to the point where I don’t think I’ll ever get to them, but Cash by Johnny Cash provides, I think, a pretty solid foundation to the pile.  

An impediment to this task was an accumulation of fees at the City Council library, a debt I am embarassed to say has escalated to over $60. I refuse to pay it, because I am cheap, and selfish, and stubborn, and besides, Borders keeps sending me 30% off vouchers, and I am a weak person when it comes to a newly-minted book. Sure, I may have spent more than $60 this year on books, but I get to keep the damn things at the end, which is fun for moving when it next rolls around again. A side task to the reading of the classics is an accumulation of the most intellectually impressive bookshelf ever, replacing and refining the choices on my 6″ x 6″ bookcase. I admit I finally culled 100+ books stored, untouched, at mum’s – old uni textbooks and pretentious literature that I was ashamed to have thought was important.

My prescribed reading even comes with themes; with an impending trip to France comes Perfume and Notre Dame de Paris. So far I have learnt that Paris has a stench, and the perfumiers are not to be trusted. Thank goodness I am not a virgin.

The bane of my reading experience was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which inadvertently started the classics reading trend after seeing a friend erupt into a fit of giggles while reading it on a holiday in January. I had never been interested in it before, knowing nothing about it besides its link to Nicholas Cage. (See: “No”.) The book became some kind of expanding vortex, as it took me over three months to read. When I thought I only had half to go, I had to temporarily suspend my love affair with Corelli and read three other novels to teach at school, including my second lash at Life Of Pi. (Duh, t’was better in the second pass). But when I returned, I felt like the page numbers keep changing, or that someone kept gluing in more pages at the end of my book, and I was permanently stuck on 100 pages till the end. The good part was that Corelli seemed to be one of those novels I could genuinely return to after a month of absence and be able to pick it all up again immediately.

One book I purchased on whimsy, because I had been meaning to sample Eggers for a while now, was What Is The What. I knew nothing of Eggers’ style, but was buoyed by the fact that it was a novelised biography. I  added it to my mum’s pile of required reading, if for the only reason that I’ve heard some quite eye-opening things she’s said about the Sudanese refugees in her suburb. Clearly my preaching-through-book has her fixed right up. 

There was one book that waited in my to-do pile, a delicious book so unliterary in both style and content that I felt so awfully naughty for even just purchasing it. Dan stole the Motley Crue biography off me and managed to get away with an unforgivable crime: that of reading a book I’ve purchased before me. (He claimed it made good toilet reading). I cut into part of my Corelli-marathon to read it, but in a more suitable location.

Oh, am I namedropping books that give me the smart? Excuse me.

** Clearly turning thirty turned me into a walking, breathing, self-help guide with many highly conscious attempts at self-betterment. I have begun to cook proper recipes (adding olives to a jar of pasta sauce does not constitute cooking), I learnt to ride a bike (well, once, and then I cut my foot open, but I’ll count that as a victory over uncoordination), I stopped biting my nails (a lifelong shitty habit), planned an overseas holiday with my mum, am possibly planning on learning to knit (depending on my attention span)  and have vowed to not be working in Caboolture at the end of the year.

CJR

I haven’t written because I don’t know what to write about my dad.

Dad died on February 24, 2007. I haven’t written because I felt if I were writing, it had to be about him. I couldn’t write about other trivialities, because I hadn’t gotten his death out of my system.

When someone dies in your house at 4am, there’s only one thing you can do: drag yourself out of bed, hug your mum long and hard, touch dad on the hand, and go and make a cup of tea.

Dad died at 4am on February 24, 2007, and I still haven’t written about it. Oh, I have composed this in my head, dozens of times over, so rhythmically and lexically perfect, but it never comes.

February 24 is the date of my parents’ wedding anniversary. We like to believe that even though dad had lost all ability to communicate with us days before he died, he had stuck around to reach their 47th anniversary, drifting away in the early hours of the morning. He was a stubborn bastard like that.

When I’m at the shops and see old couples out, I get angry and feel resentment towards those old men who are withered and wearing their comfortable tracksuits and Lynx sneakers and enjoying life. Why can’t my dad come out shopping too for bargain electronics? I sulk every time I pass an elderly man now. 

Mum and dad were very adept at hiding bad stuff from me, preferring me not to worry about the heavy stuff. Dad was diagnosed with stomach cancer about August 2006, and he deteriorated pretty quickly from there. He was 70 and had just recovered from a bout of shingles. The doctors put him through one round of chemotherapy, and a round of experimental drugs that mum confessed to me later nearly killed him. Mum believes now he’d had cancer for some time, probably even from the time he retired in 2004. He was excited when Blue Care hired him a wheelchair in January to help him get from the bedroom to my parents’ outdoor patio, and mum laughed on the phone describing him doing wheelies around the house. By the time I visited him, the next day, he was already too exhausted to show me. He never used the wheelchair again.

I wrote dad a two-page letter and gave it to him a week before he died. In it, I told him what he’d taught me and passed on to me, and expressed hope that he was proud of me. That letter formed the bulk of the eulogy I delivered at dad’s funeral. I sat in between mum and Dan in the front row of the church. I am glad he was there. Dan now lives across the train tracks from that church, and I drive past it on the way to mum’s. It was hard watching the hearse drive away from the church, and I gripped on to mum for dear life.    

Dad met Dan only once, during his stage of convalescing on his day bed in the sun. It made him tired, and he had to lay down inside after only a short chat. Dad would’ve adored him.

I bought a pair of navy blue polka-dot cotton Peter Alexander pyjamas for dad’s last Christmas, to make convalescing more comfortable and good-looking. Mum wears them to bed now. 

I have never loved my mum more fiercely than during this time. She cared for him without complaining, lived at Mt Olivett Hospital while he was there, fought alongside dad to get him home for his last few weeks, cried with me often in the carpark of the hospital, and administered his morphine on the cheerful advice of the Blue Care nurses. She sobbed to me on the phone a few days before he died, saying he’d collapsed while trying to get himself to the toilet, and didn’t have the mental capacity any more to realise that he couldn’t make it himself. Stubborn old bastard. I  moved into my parents’ that very afternoon.

It became increasingly hard to comprehend what he was saying, and where his pain was. Cancer had stopped him from being able to keep food down for some time, and his body was essentially a skeleton, and his eyes had sunken back in his face. His stomach pain was unbearable, and his bones ached as they rubbed against the mattress. He lost all control over his functions. The Blue Care nurses marvelled at mum’s ability to cope with dad’s care, and she brushed it off saying that her years of nursing training  had kicked in automatically. What I saw was a pure act of love towards someone my mum adored all her life; this I saw when she called me in to help me roll him over to carefully rub moisturiser on his joints. We took shifts to watch on him; as we read our respective novels we knew we were on Death Watch. We slept in short bursts. When I went to bed on the 23rd, I knew we wouldn’t have long.  I miss him.

Writing about something else wouldn’t do my dad justice, until I told the story of his death at 4am on February 24, 2007.

sandpaper relief

I didn’t realise there was something worse than mosquitoes, but there you go. Fuck you, midges, I knew I was getting bitten a little on Friday but the two or three ones I successfully killed did not cause all the carnage that currently appears on my legs. I was attacked by the world’s tiniest vampires, a large army of them apparently. While most of them attacked my legs, I have some choice welts on my forearms, and one particularly adventurous midge found its way to my lower back. I lost count after 20 bites on one leg alone. Mosquito bites have nothing on these, clearly the world’s largest bites, engorged sores that they are. You would be able to see these disgusting red marks on my legs on Google Earth if I went outside.

Am I itchy? Only sandpaper would provide me with relief, two days later. And my legs look hideous, like some pre-pubescent kid whose parents just reluctantly took them on their first fishing trip.

I want to cover my legs up with jeans, but I don’t think that’s possible in 30° weather, the only temperature appropriate for the start of the last term tomorrow.

wait, it’s august?

The month starts with A, but I do believe it is already August, not April. How many months separate the two? What a lazy little writer I’ve become. But there are so many things that I could be writing about in an interesting and humorous way. But I’m struck with writing conniptions! What’s a girl to do? I have all these fascinating little motifs to write about, but wow the brain lethargy. I load up my own site daily to use the daily links to the side, and every time my main page loads I feel embarassed greeting it. Edit me, it pleads. Make me look up to date and relevant. I don’t want to be stale. I want to be timely and witty. And then I tell it to shut up and clink on some link to a blog that regularly updates more than every third month and uses far better adjectives than I.

(I also do realise how lame it is to use a meta post as my first one in months. But you take what you can get.)

The local newspapers have been including human interest stories about the as-yet unsubstantiated link between bipolar and outputs of great creativity, and I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve got the opposite. Who wants to hear about when everything’s A-OK. I imagine being the writing equivalent of one of those people who you pass on the sidewalk with a big grin on the face, wondering What the hell’s wrong with them? I have been walking around all Goddamn Chipper these past few months, all unstressed and blasé and comfortable and just dandy. Silly sad, no time for you.

Curse you, August, and your unusually warm winter days and your flu bug that you have brought to anyone I have extended contact with. Which I really only hate because you have my local newspaper screaming all EPIDEMIC and stuff in bold caps which makes teh peppel scared. But not me. I will boldly go to the Ekka.

you know, you could probably do with some sleep, motherfucker

There aren’t many things I’ve experienced in life that have made me that scared. I speak in front a group of more than 300 adolescents a week, I lived with my mother for 22 years, and I patted a tiger once (which wasn’t really scary as it was chained up and there were plenty of attendants around with ye olde tranquiliser-braü).

The maxi-taxi we caught home on Saturday night was quite easily something a sane person shouldn’t have undertaken. But we were tired, and all so incredibly drunk; the world’s worst two excuses. Our cab driver managed to fall asleep behind the wheel on multiple occasions, and with that came driving 20 kilometres under the speed limit, drifting into oncoming lanes, and narrowly avoiding traffic islands. We just held on to each other for dear life, wide-eyed, hoping it would be all over soon. I nearly started crying overtired tears of relief when he bounced the van around the corner into my street, despite nearly missing it, despite me giving him very clear, loud instructions about fifty metres away from the corner.

And what did we do? Nothing. I was so flabbergasted that someone would so openly risk someone else’s life that I couldn’t speak up. Even when he told us how much our inflated cab charge was (nearly $40 to go a couple of suburbs), I couldn’t even open my mouth. If I did, I’m sure all I could’ve mustered would have been a squeak.

Did we complain? As Dan jumped out of the back, he yelled loudly, “You should probably get some fucking sleep!” And the guy laughed, merrily, just as if he’d been told a hearty joke about nuns and dwarves, and — in what literary circles call an Understatement — chortled, “Oh yes, I am very tired tonight.”

the nineteenth-century damsel doth fawn too muche

Oh, I couldn’t possibly have updated last night, as I was too busy with the rituals of Valentines Day. Oh so giddy with amore and champagne. It was an evening organised in a way that only Dan and I can do: haphazardly, at the last minute, with minimal forethought, but with Great Success at the end. Dinner was all about Italian in Paddington, and my last minute booking rewarded our lazy selves with complimentary wine, a table on the deck, the lightest garlic bread ever, and for the win, an acoustic cover of Eye of the Tiger. The tealight candle lasted long enough for our dinner and snuffed out when we departed.

I have a history of being wholly unimpressed with the Valentines Day shemozzle. I guess all I needed was some gent to make me that giddy for me to want to shower them in appropriate yet slightly atypical presents. I guess I am still not one for candies and roses, but I do like any stupid occasion that allows me to indulge my wicked gift-giving skills. In return, from my gift-inept boy, was a wholly inappropriate (birthday) card with the most syrupy message, so sweet I thought it may have been time to get over my hatred for the dentist and get some cavities filled. And Dan’s ridiculous card was just so frightfully perfect there was no need for him to buy anything else. To (shamefully) illustrate just how much I loved it, I even discretely brought it to work today, in case I needed something to cheer me up. And after the frantic day I had, I pulled it out in the car on the way home, and predictably and shamefully I read it while driving. I swooned all over the highway like some nineteenth-century damsel with some ridiculous grin plastered on her face. It is likely that it will be perused again before bed, sending me no doubt into fits of frenetic swooning.

sleep is for the sleepy

My alarm woke me up this morning, although in a more conventional manner than which I am used. I fell asleep last night, mid-text message, and woke this morning with the mattress vibrating in an altogether unwelcome wake up call. I’d dropped the phone and promptly passed out, a partial goodnight missive to Dan still on the screen. I’m not really sure why I needed to fall asleep right then and there; I was only about 20 seconds away from sending it and putting it on my bedside table. The light was already out.

I’m sure I was trying to go for some record, because Dan and I slept in until 1 on Sunday, and after a lacklustre mooch around Westfield, I’d had enough and napped for another couple of hours. How the hell I accomplished this, I am not sure. Apparently I also nap with my eyes open, which is allegedly an easy way to freak the hell out of your other half.

give me your tired, your weary (feet)

Thank you, first day of school. You gave me a 5:30am alarm, tired feet, constant sweaty complexion, 40 students in one class, an anxiety because of over-organisation, and a sudden realisation that I will be doing this every day for the next 2 years. Except the 40 students dealio, that’s kind of illegal.

(But I did finish Life Of Pi the night before I went back to work. The fun really is over.)