Orange rocks

This island is littered with the things ...





We spent Sunday up in a far away corner of the state. Mt William is deep in the backwoods: roadkill territory, spotted with old mining towns slowly, slowly emptying out. We had lunch under the trees by the beach, sheltered from the waves and the horizon, which terrify Lucy. She is afraid her parents will be swept out to sea, and afraid of that point where the two blues meet and people drop off the world.



It's a long drive from our place, and the journey was punctuated with the 'are we there yet?'s our own parents suffered. We did some mammoth drives when I was a kid: bundled into the Nissan Urvan before dawn, and driven from rural Victoria to Brisbane in one long, straight line, Dad driving through the night as we slept in the folded down seats in the back. The trips were in summer and I remember the blazing light and the heat in outback New South Wales, my parents stopping at small towns to buy us a can of fizzy drink. Oh, the delicious anticipation and the quandary: Passiona or green lime? The drinks came in a size that's long been phased out, much smaller than the standard 375 mls, and the cans were uncrushable.

I remember too, the car lulling me into my inner world, the place where kids fantasize when there's nothing else to do. Bored, bored, boring: Lucy uses these words all the time, now, to get my goat. I used to worry about my kids being bored - am I not enriching their lives enough?; am I cheating them of necessary experiences? But after some fidgeting Nell picked up her Barbie and told stories to herself (a two year old with a Barbie and a feminist mother - yes, there's something to be written on that) and Lu pulled over some books and then drifted off in an un-focused stare. Both were heading places where I can't, I don't want to, follow.

We take our girls to some beautiful places. They won't remember the heart stopping blue of the water on this particular Sunday, but when we strap them in their car seats, I think we are giving them a chance to explore something more than this particular island.

Yesterday it was raining, and cold. I remember a Sunday like that some years ago, spent sitting in front of the fire and drinking tea; now I have two kids who are mad for splashing in puddles and twirling their umbrellas. We kit up and set off, walking the block in the rain.



Once the thrill of the wet starts to fade, the adventures begin. Yesterday it was Snow White but Cinderella is also in vogue at our house. I once wrote that living with a real princess is as testing as sharing space with the Disney kind. Now I have some experience in both and I'm starting to reconsider. And I wonder, where does this come from, and what to do to chase the wenches away?

We live in a sea of pink but we've never actually invited a pop culture princess into our home. That is, until recently when allowing Lucy to chose her yoghurt for kindergarten lead to a six pack of princess themed Nestle vanilla and strawberry milk-based product. We could have - should have? - said no but like parents everywhere we were keen to avoid a meltdown in the dairy aisle and so we forked out for some indoctrination. But I think it must have started earlier - why did she chose that particular option? - possibly around the communal kinder table, or outside in the playground when the pirate boys said girls can only be mermaids. I always assumed that I could through vigilance and firmness protect my kid from inappropriate gendered messages; turns out - yet again - I can't.

I'm tinkering around the edges of some of those messages. Snow White is a girl who is hated for her kindness, not her attractiveness and blah, blah, blah, she lives with the dwarves and plants a garden and manages their financial interests, acting as an agent and selling on the mined jewels and gold. Her post-poisoning salvation comes in the form of a prince but one who is also a doctor, so that at least some motivation comes from medical expertise rather than general heroic maleness. In the end, the doctor-prince, S.W. and the dwarves all live together, with S.W. continuing her role as financial administrator for the guys.

This is okay as far as it goes but the things about kids is, they act as a mirror to our own cracks and inconsistencies. In my story the guy still saves the girl and the day - why not a witch with traditional knowledge, for example? - the girl is still poisoned by a crone (thereby perpetuating all those nasty constructions of older women; and S.W. doesn't just politely say thanks and walk away at the end - she ends up working as an employee in the men's businesses. I bet she does the housework too. And then there's the whole issue of abusive female family members who are demonised and absent and neglectful fathers who don't get judged for failing their kids.

I am caught up in the structures and practices I critique; they shape my thinking about what's possible even as I so carefully try to create new narratives for my girls, in the stories I tell "in [my] head and [my] hands" (Lucy's words) and in their lives. I can de-construct a fairy tale, but as soon after Al moved down to live with me I stopped remembering to pay bills, lost my pin number on any number of occasions and - shamefully - I can't name our bank or our insurers; nor do I know when the rates are due. I make the money in this house but I focus a lot more on the muffins. I pretend this isn't true but of course I have my own fairy tales, and they have nothing to do with poisoned apples and tiaras.

I don't hate myself for this - I've never met a feminist whose walk always matches her talk; try as we do, our possibilities and improbabilities are shaped - sometimes obviously, sometimes secretly - by our gender. My feminist motherhood, probably like all kinds of motherhood, leads me to think carefully about myself as a person and a role model, and this can be confronting and sometimes liberating. And as part of my motherhood, I try to show my kids some of the many different ways they can be women; perhaps these examples come as much in my own failures and oddities as in my strengths.

In the meantime, I have kids who chase after the evil queen and throw a giant apple at her. They beat at monsters with 'ferocious sticks'; they describe themselves as strong and brave; they can't wait to grow up to go to work, have babies, drink beer and chop firewood with a BIG axe. Lucy told me today, "I protect little kids and herbivores. I am a really good girl." And Nell agreed in her flat Aussie drawl: "Yeah."

I have faith that those bloody Disney princesses will never have much resonance beyond the yoghurt lids. I don't really have a strong view on what women should be but if my kids turn out the way they plan, I'll be a very happy mother and a very happy feminist indeed.

Driving the point home

One of Lucy's favourite stories:

Once upon a time, there was a naughty little girl, who smoked and also liked to light fires; she was a FIRE BUG. One day, she lit a fire at the beach, and all the grasses burned and all the shrubs in the back dunes, and all the trees as well. And the animals had no where to go, they ran away from the fire which burned and burned and burned. And the poor animals had to run to the city because their homes burned, poor things, and they were very sad. And the beach was ruined and people couldn't swim there and people were sad too. But the police caught that naughty firebug and sent her in front of a judge in a COURT OF LAW. The judge said she was very naughty and sent her to jail where there was no telly and no nice food. And serve her right, that naughty firebug.

Our kids pick up all sorts of cues that we are not even aware of. But I feel it is useful to really hammer home important life lessons. Subtlety is for the weak.

This story also makes me realise that even after decades working as a sociologist, I am clearly seduced by a punishment rather than rehabilitation paradigm.

****

Lucy has just been introduced to Struwwelpeter and she loves it. It's falling apart and so she's not allowed to touch - which adds to its mystery and desirability - and in the morning over cornflakes we read about kids getting burned while playing with matches and starving because they won't eat the soup. I've not yet introduced her to the kid who sucks his thumbs and has them cut off by a ruthless scissor-hand creature; as an erstwhile thumbsucker I still find that a little too close to home.

Things turned out to be different on a Tuesday

Thanks for all the kind words and advice when I was feeling down. Making decisions when we are sick is a bad idea but conversely, I think illness can strip away the veneer of coping and allows us, in our vulnerability, to be more truthful about what we want and what we can have - essentially, it lets us re-think what matters. So there are changes in this household and they were put in place last Tuesday; hey, it'll all be different on Tuesday!

When Al and I had our kids we made a commitment to not having them in child care. This wasn't - and isn't - a reflection on other people's choices; it comes from our own experiences as kids, from our desire to parent our own kids intensively, and it is facilitated by living in a place where it's possible (in theory) to live on one income. But it hasn't quite worked out like that. Some of the unraveling has been easy: Lucy wanted to start going to kinder and we found a really good one, quiet and relaxed, with sofas and yoga, and Lu loves it all. Some changes have been harder: it's clear that living on one income is not possible for us. We have an average size mortgage, no significant petrol or transport costs, a modest lifestyle but still our carefully stored buffer has dwindled to nothing - financially, we can't do what we set out to do. Lots of people do - this is obvious reading all those lovely blogs about parenting and living frugally - but we can't. In the end, we need money in the bank (this is a product of my own childhood experiences) and we like to spend money on some fun things occasionally. Sometimes I am disappointed by this but like most people I'm a product of my culture, and while I can wriggle about in it, it settles on my shoulders and it's hard to shake.

So, we are about to become a two income family, kind of. Al has found The Job, the job he has been looking for since he was seventeen, the job that might finally fit him and make him feel happy to go to work in the morning, and he'll be doing that four days a week. And as for me, well it turns out all those years of working like a man have paid off in some serious long service leave, which my dear and lovely bosses will allow me to take as 2.5 days a week over the course of the next six months, while staying on full pay (don't hate me, please - I am fully aware of just how good my work conditions are). So I get to come back into the realm of the domestic, to regain some knowledge of the routines of our home and the nuances of my kids. Nell doesn't have a lot of words and the words she has aren't clear - Al can understand her and I can't; I want to learn to understand my little one. The girls love to bake and read and play; I want to give them my time to do that. I'll get to pick Lu up from kinder, I'll get to ride the bus with them to the museum with the trains, I'll get to swear under my breath as I push the overladen, hummer-size pram up the hill to our house. And I get to go to work and do the thinking and writing that sustains me in a different way.

This is our way of getting some balance back. More paid work in the household but for me at least, and somewhat counter-intuitively, more space in my days. Al gets a chance to re-engage with an adult world. The girls get happier parents (I never really understood the importance of this until the last few months) and lots more of their mother with very little disruption to their lives. This is not a happy ending because this parenting gig is never going to end. But a hopeful beginning of the next little time in our lives.

These are our choices but they are choices that are bound up in a set of structures: social networks, educational opportunities, class, ethnicity, gender, workplace agreements, local housing markets, government spending priorities. But our particular path is also shaped by luck: I have good, good managers who personally understand the importance of work-life balance; Al happened to meet a person who opened the door to his new employment. It's a reminder that sitting in judgment on other people's choices is an act of ignorance, if for no other reason than we can never be properly aware of the luck and structure that open and close what's available to us.

I take all my parenting tips from the Hollywood stars

I never thought Angelina Jolie and I had much in common, save for us both being partnered up to hotties and looking awkward when we wear high heels. But turns out, we share the greatest bond of all: we're really crap mothers.

I think women's magazines are poisonous, what with their misogyny and those dodgy clairvoyants, so I never read them, save in doctors' surgeries (when it's like anaesthetic to dull the one hour wait for my four o'clock appointment) and the chip and fizzy drink aisle of Coles, where I wander forlornly, wondering who thought getting rid of Atomic Tomato flavoured crisps was a justifiable way forward for Samboy. And here I read that grave fears are held for Ange and Brad's kids. Grave fears are held because there'll be six under six (I only ever got to two under two), the kids fight, they're jealous of each other and they're given junk food (which according to a dietician is a 'ticking time bomb') to eat. Truly, these kids are doomed, damned and betrayed by such cruelty, as their clearly disturbed behaviour (Pushing! Fighting over toys!) shows.

I have no idea if any of the reports are true (though I tend to doubt the reliability of 'sources' and 'those close to the couple') or if people believe them, and can't think it actually affects A & B in anyway to have this written about them, but it really shits me that these kinds of messages are spewed into my world for the punters' weekly dose of moral indignation.

In the last day or so Nell, Lu or both have:

* eaten marshmallows and green cordial before bed and then fallen asleep without brushing their teeth;
* watched the whole series of Walking With Dinosaurs, twice;
* Eaten paint;
* Eaten chook food (in my defense, it was organic);
* Head butted and body slammed each other; in one memorable instance, Lucy kicked Nell in the face and Nell bit her toe (just like those python crushing the elephant/ elephant falls to the ground and crushes the python scenarios);
* Competed constantly for my attention;
* Screamed loudly and annoyingly in public places;
* Always wanted what the other one had;;
* Tantrumed because there'd be no playing in the dog park mud today.

And while I don't think these reflect the very best parenting practices and kiddie attitudes, I'm okay with all this (perhaps a little worried about the paint). Because I'm a good parent and my kids are good kids.

That magazine had a lot in common with the brouhaha over the 'I hate kids' posts a month or so ago, over at feministing. The posts annoyed me but I was really pissed off by the comments, here and at other sites, that often took a 'tolerant' stand of 'I don't blame the kids, I blame the parent'. People's whining about kids behaving badly reflects a belief that a) kids spring fully formed from the head of Zeus, all clued up on social rules and self-discipline; b) have no claim to freedom of movement or freedom of association; and c) that adults conform to social, legal and moral rules (cf. any early Saturday morning outside of the Saloon on Charles Street/ any other pub anywhere).

And I'm kind of sick of people holding parents to a standard of behaviour, a clarity of judgement, a commitment to purpose, that we don't expect of the childless. I'm not talking about systematic cruelty or on-going abuse but the daily stumblings as we try our best. People are fine about their 'addiction' to chocolate, their lazy Friday take-out noodles, their bludging in front of the telly, their spending money on expensive shoes instead of rent, their failed attempts to start exercising or whatever other quirky vices we all lay claim to. And that's fine, because we are all lazy and tired and forgetful and all the other things that stop us being The Very Best We Can Possibly Be. Yes, I do have a duty to my kids' welfare that is different to the duty we as adults have to our own selves, but my kids eat a lot less junk food and watch a lot less telly than the average Australian who frowns when the girls eat a brownie and whine annoyingly amongst a self-satisfied cafe crowd.

And I think there's a kind of irony in that magazine, with that article, sitting right next to the Salt and Vinegar chips and the Fanta in Coles.

Gender bending

Today was Grammy's funeral. I walked into the room wearing my black dress - the go-anywhere black dress that we all read was a wardrobe basic in Cosmo , back in the late 80s - and Lucy looked at me and asked "Why are you being a girl today?". I thought that going out to work each morning dressed in trousers would be somewhat counter-balanced by my breasts and vagina (or at least my uterus might give me away) but no - despite our best intentions to to de-emphasise gender, girls wear dresses.

Oddly, Lu and Nell almost never wear dresses but Lu's very clear that they are girls (because they are brave, and apparently boys are 'often not so brave', poor possums). Kids' gender rules are more confusing than those in men's mags (and women's mags and just about everywhere else in society), that's for sure.

***

The girls slept through the funeral. On the way to the wake we explained Lu wouldn't be able to say good-bye to Grammy:

"But I wanted to kiss her".
"I know but now she is in heaven and so you can't".
"I want to go to heaven and kiss her".
"Well, we're going to the bowls club to eat cake instead".
"That's good too".

No use pining for things you can't have, I guess.

***

Thanks to all those who left such caring comments. It's been hard and sad but some peace is beginning to grow in my heart.

Down time

My dad is down to help with childcare while Al works for the union up to the election. We've been all having our butts kicked by the kids who have reached new levels of challenging behaviour. Dad said something the other day that made me almost cry with relief. He said the girls are difficult kids (and without going in to my own family history, Dad knows a thing or two about difficult kids). I used to think it was a dreadful thing to call kids difficult, to label them with our own perceptions of 'appropriate' behaviour. I thought any troubles with interactions, discipline, etc were the result of family dynamics. I say 'Ha! Get down off your high horse' to that previous, pious self. Golly she was an annoying twit and she's getting her come-uppance now.

It was so good to hear that it's not just me and Al, that it's not just that we're not cut out for this parenthood gig and found out a little too late. We've been able to stop self-flagellating quite so much, knowing it's not just that we somehow don't make the grade. My kids are difficult. My kids are difficult. It doesn't solve any of the problems we're facing, but some days it's enough to keep me going until the blessed 7pm bedtime.

I'm taking a break from writing because I realise that if I continue all there'll be is 'my kids are difficult' written with varying degrees of relief and resentment, and without any resolution. And one day I hope to show the girls this blog, and I don't think my kids need to know how desperate we often feel in the face of their behaviour. Plus, blogs help us notice and make sense of things but I need words to express that noticing, and the words are fast drying up under the 4.50 am wake ups, the constant screams and anger and violence and whinging and disobedience and dangerous behaviour both girls direct against each other and against us. There comes a time when there's not much more to say, when there's just a primal scream of 'make it stop', whirling in my belly and barely blocked from escaping out my throat wwith a violent and ugly force. There's only so many ways I can write my girls are difficult without becoming boring and repetitive and whiney.

So I'm going to stop finding well wrought ways of saying "what the f*** is going on in my life?" and I'll try to figure it in other ways instead. I'm going to post up photos of my garden, of the girls, of the things that make me happy in the interim, and when there are some more interesting words I'll start typing them in again.

The spider and the fuki-yols

Lucy loves, loves, loves stories. Every meal time, any moment of downtime she pipes up, "Mummy, can you tell me a story?" Goldilocks, and the Three Pigs are her favourites, although Al's lesser known Loxi Gold (about the baby bear and a mother from the Parents and Friends Association) and the cheeky puppy (who eats a cake and goes too far) are also in demand. It drives us crazy, telling these stories fifteen, sixteen times a day. And of course, we have fallen in the trap of making them ever more detailed in the hope of keeping ourselves amused, and Lucy then wants the more detailed version and so a boring 3 minutes is turninginto a boring 6 minutes for the teller. Thus, it's been great to have Grandad along, with his welcome contributions of the princess and the Pea, Rosie Red Cap, the musicians of Bremen and the Pied Piper. But even he is starting to grit his teeth over describing just how dirty the princess really was.

We tell the stories to help Lu with her vocab and to encourage her imagination. But being high minded can be a right pain in the arse. I do sometimes wonder if Lu asks for these stories to see if this will be the time Mummy breaks down and bangs her head against the table in frustration. But no - it turns out,she's been learning about narrative. And now, she's pinned it.

So I write the following to remember just how incandescently proud I was when this morning Lu said to me, "Mummy, do you want to hear a story?", sat in her chair, and started in the traditional way ...

"Once upon a time there was a spider. The person came along and the spider bit her. Then she went along and found another spider and it was friendly and they were happy.

There was a fuki-yol*, and they bit a person. Then the person went away and there were more fuki-yols and they were friendly. And they went home and the house was white and purple and sprinkly. And the rain stopped and it was a nice day and there was a rainbow. And that's the end of the story.

Right Mum, I'm off now. Bye-bye."

Note, if you will, the marrying of a linear narrative with multiple subject positionings, the tension between the protagonists, the final reconciliation, the roller coaster of emotions, the symbolism within the happy ending.

I will boldly state, in the most annoying way, that my kid is amazing.


* Upon asking, I discovered a fuki-yol looks like a dragonfly.

Worth waiting for

Ever since we decided to have kids, Al and I have looked forward to certain moments: gardening with the girls; Saturday morning soccer; and waking up to morning cuddles in our bed. For Al in particular, this last represents all that is most delightful about parenting.

This morning, I woke to see for the first time a small figure walking across the room, to feel a little body climb up and snuggle down with her head on my pillow, a hand stroking my face, and to hear that dear voice chatting on. Then Nell woke, and I pulled her into the bed, and watched and listened as my two daughters touched and tickled and spoke to each other, Lu taking the role of spokeswoman and reporting Nell's weather preferences: "Nellie likes rain, Mama, and she loves thunder and she LOVES the ice, she loves to crunch and munch it". This morning was one of the best of my life.

As for Al, well he missed the whole thing because he had been sent to the couch after getting home late from bowling (bowling ironically, of course) with a few beers in him, which means a high probability of snoring, which I cannot abide. He did however, win two of his games and match the top score for the South Launceston bowling league, so it may well have been worth the sacrifice of his family dream.

Things I never thought I'd say

Well, there's hundreds but here's three in the last day or so:

There're children in the Sudan who'd be very grateful for that baby latte [in response to complaints that 'my latte isn't frothy enough'.]

Don't spit in the cake mix.

Please stop licking batter off your father's leg.

Chicken and chips

By golly I worked hard in the garden yesterday, and was so proud to get all listed tasks completed. There's something both empowering and kind of depressing in spending three hours ankle deep in chicken sh*t. I dragged the bedding out of the coop, swept out the run, washed down the walls (!) and laying boxes and spread new straw. Then, because I'm the kind of chook owner who cares, I caught the chooks and rubbed vegetable oil on their legs to get rid of what Organic Gardener magazine tells me are mites. Rubbing oil on chicken legs is just a little too intimate for me - I got a heapin' helpin' of the heebie jeebies and wonder how people can eat those scaly pins. Uggh. Yuk.

(On a related matter: the student has become the master. I couldn't actually catch the chooks - they're too quick and I flinch when beaks and talons come flying into my face. Al sent out Lu, who caught each one of them without fuss. I asked how she does it and she replied 'Just like that, Mum'; patronised by my two year old!)

(Also - can I have two sets of parentheses like this? - I think we're getting a little too lax with hygiene. My daughter stood beside me, kissing the chooks' combs and murmuring 'I love you sweetie'as I rubbed oil into their mite infested legs; even with the five second rule, I wonder if this is a biohazard too far.)

I felt really pleased with myself until I realised that now the chooks have a cleaner house and nicer legs than I do. And they're still being stingy with the eggs.

****

Al and I are so careful with the girls' food. It's not sophisticated fare but we eat organic, eat fresh, eat local, cook from first princples - we live all of those feel good phrases. Why is it then that at least twice a week we end up sitting on the couch, watching really bad telly and eating junk food? We'd never feed it to the kids, why do we feed it to ourselves? Al gets into his coat, searched for the keys, drives down to Coles in the very cold winter night, buys the chips and lollies,the ice cream and chocolate, and then comes home again. He does this, and I want him to so this, when we know what we eat is, in my father's useful phrase, 'gutrot'. We live a double life: right on pseudo-hippy homesteaders by day; toxic, couch dwelling potatoes by night.

On Saturday we woke up hung over from the junk food. We felt ill. We have shaken hands on a new approach: we won't eat anything we wouldn't feed the girls. Two days clean so far.

But again I ask: why is it we are so careful with our children's emotional, physical, spiritual health and so careless - more than careless, knowingly destructive - of our own?