Is It Just Me? (12 page)

I am about three months away from welcoming my third child into the world, and apart from being beside myself with excitement about having what is these days quite a large family, I can't help but think of how lucky this baby is already.

He or she will be born in the same position I was privileged enough to be born into: third. Having two older siblings has been the luckiest stroke of my life and it happened, with no effort from me, on the day I was born.

My older sisters, Catherine and Elizabeth, were nine and seven when I was carried into our outer-suburban home in 1973. I don't remember too much about that house because we moved to the UK soon after, but I hear the eating areas had “revolutionary” carpet. Its main feature was that it could be cleaned by a purpose-built “carpet sweeper”, but it could also scrape your shins clean of skin if you fell off your inflatable hopper. It was like you'd come off on gravel.

On the plane to the UK I was looked after by my sisters. They also pushed the Maclaren stroller and later saved up their pocket money to buy me the teddy bear I coveted from Debenhams department store.

Dozens of photos show me sitting comfortably on Catherine's hip, not my mother's. They both always said it was like a dream come true to get a real-life baby to love and look after – and even now, thirty-eight years later, I think they still feel the same. I will always be their baby sister, eternally five, which I'm sure makes it difficult for them to even imagine me with three kids and a mortgage of my own.

Having older sisters gave me an immediate gang. I had two kids who were always on my side. Their influence is a part of my DNA. My parents made my bones, but I feel like those two girls put meat on them.

When I shifted schools in Year 3, I was the only new girl in class. I don't remember having trouble fitting in, but there must have been some issues because Catherine and Elizabeth decided to get me some good press without having to wait for a birthday party.

I wouldn't be ten until November and they simply couldn't wait that long for me to make an impact, so they hatched a plan for an Easter party. And so it happened. All my new friends received handmade invitations in the shape of bunny rabbits and arrived in their Sunday best at my home on a sunny day in March toting armfuls of chocolate rabbits and Humpty Dumpties. I was in with the girls at school nine months ahead of time. Those sisters of mine were PR geniuses!

When all my friends were merely seeing the movie
NeverEnding Story
, I knew the theme song was sung by Limahl – the guy who fronted Kajagoogoo, a group which was the brainchild of Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran. I also knew Limahl's real name was Christopher Hamill and that his stage name was an anagram of his surname.

When my peers were collecting Holly Hobbie, I was collecting imported copies of
Smash Hits
and learning all the words to Nik Kershaw songs. My sisters made me cool. And they got me out of stuff.

I really despised piano lessons, so when it was Catherine's turn to drop me one day I unloaded my gripes on the way. I just loved being in her pale-blue VW Beetle. We would listen to Simple Minds on cassette and enjoy her mixtapes with classics from Grace Jones to Yazoo. When we got to the class she said, “Wait here,” and I watched her snake her way, dressed in Staggers jeans and a Saba top, down the side entrance of my cranky, arthritic piano teacher's house. A few moments later she re-emerged and said, with a toss of her Kim Wilde hair, “You don't have to go back. Ever.” I think we may have gone and shared a hot chocolate at the Black Cat Cafe instead.

I learnt to drive in Elizabeth's yellow Datsun Stanza. She would take me to a local drive-in car park on Sundays and let me bunny hop as much as I wanted. She never got mad at me for riding the clutch. Later, when she moved overseas, she would write me hilarious aerograms from exotic locations like Tegucigalpa and Cape Town. When she returned one time flush with working-holiday funds, she shouted me an enormously expensive pair of leather boots and I cried because I didn't think I deserved them.

I grew up reading their air-freight copies of
Vanity Fair
. I knew about the photography of Annie Leibovitz and Diane Arbus and the experimental music of Japan, Laurie Anderson and Talking Heads. They encouraged me to read Truman Capote and Harper Lee and Jack Kerouac. And they bought me Swatch watches and Clarins cleansers. Nothing, it seemed, was too good for their “Doll”, a name that has stuck with me to this day.

They openly gushed to their friends about my achievements, from class captain to junior librarian, at primary school. They have been delighted by me my whole life. Just delighted. It is a rare gift to know you thrill someone just by your very existence. And they gave that to me freely, constantly. They still give it today.

So to you, my unborn little one who has but three months before you come into this world, I say congratulations. Because you have hit the jackpot with two older brothers who will give you a lifetime of feeling cool and wanted and special. And provide great insight into what a cuckoo lady your mother is!

 

20th January 2013

When I was eighteen, I took a three-month working holiday to Tokyo. It was the first time I'd felt really conspicuous. Here I was, not able to speak a word of Japanese, trying to negotiate subways and menus and supermarkets, and teaching language to people who couldn't speak a word of English. Let me tell you, this is difficult when neither party understands each other.

More than this, though, was my physical appearance. I felt like I'd walked on to the set of
Gulliver's Travels
. I felt ENORMOUS. At 178 centimetres tall and fairly well rounded, I went the entire time without seeing a single person even vaguely like me. I'd forgotten what this felt like until a few weeks ago, when I moved into the inner city from the 'burbs.

That's right. I'm suffering massive culture shock just eleven kilometres from where I used to live.

Four years ago I moved myself, my partner and my then two-week-old baby to an area with '60s houses on big blocks. We loved it. Sure, it took an age to get to work. It took an age to get anywhere, really, so what happened was we stayed within a tight little radius of our home. We shopped local. We did everything local. And when you get into the swing of all things local, you let your standards slip a bit. I thought nothing of racing up to see Ralph the butcher or Clem the fruiterer still wearing my nightie. I'd check myself in the mirror and think, “Well, this could technically be a singlet dress, and not a nightie, if I just whack on a maternity bra.” And I fooled myself like this for almost every day of the four years we lived in our outer-suburban paradise. But we kind of felt like we were missing out on life a bit, so instead of manifesting our midlife crises by way of plug-in hair and small red sports cars, we decided to move to where the groovers are.

I am therefore the daggiest person who has ever resided in our new suburb. Ever. In its history. Which is long.

The first big difference I noticed was the names of the hairdressing businesses. The old neighbourhood was full of places called things like “Shari-Leanne's Salon” and “Snipz on High”. Now, my closest hairdresser looks not dissimilar to an IVF lab and is named simply “Blow”. Too groovy. I can't go there.

Same for coffee shops. One of our local haunts used to be “Katie's Kafe”, but now we sidle up shamefaced for our cappuccinos at places called “Lost” and “The Pound”.

Last Friday, I thought I'd slip out and pick up some take­away Thai. We had done this regularly at our previous address and it was a shoes optional, park at the door, ten-minute round-trip affair. Not so any more. I ordered our pad thai by phone and headed out the door … straight into traffic I hadn't seen since grand final day or the Olympics. This is normal? I had to circle the block five times before I could find a park (illegal), and by the time I collected the cold meal I was so stressed I could have used my own sweat as some kind of dipping sauce.

Also, where are the children? In the first week, I said to my partner when we were out with our two little fellas, “It's like that scene from
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
when the Child Catcher is in town and all the kids are hiding.”

Then we rounded a corner and we saw them all! Every child in the postcode playing in a fairly impressive playground because, we guess, their houses might have low-maintenance courtyards instead of yards full of burnt couch grass and bindis, trampolines with cracked mats, and sun-faded Little Tikes para­phernalia. Just like our old place had.

It has changed us, though. In a good way. Just this morning, we walked up to the local market and did our shopping with our granny trolley. We got a good takeaway brew and bought organic blueberries and ham off the bone. On the way home I said, “Look at us. Look how hip and inner-city we are!”

As soon as I was in a sidestreet and away from stylish eyes, I had to stop and rest on the aforementioned granny trolley because I was desperate for a loo and my pelvis was starting to hurt. These city fringe areas are not built for women with only two months to go until baby number three. Sensing my discomfort, my man said, “Do you want to push the baby in the pram instead?” To which I replied, “Great idea! It'll be like a walking frame!” (Someone call
Who
magazine immediately and tell them to call off the search for the world's sexiest person, please. I'm right here.)

We do feel plugged in, though. We can hear the rattling of trains and parties on the weekend and we see hipsters riding skateboards home carrying soy lattes. I'm seeing what's “in” and wondering if I could pull off a pair of neon sneakers or a French industrial dining table on casters.

Our kids are seeing different people, too. Brown ones, old ones, poor ones, eccentric ones. Not just wall-to-wall white people in station wagons with kids called Will. I think this is a good thing. It feels new and exciting and real. And it's inspiring me to put on some lippie when I leave the house. And a bra.

Maybe my metamorphosis to full groover will be realised when I have my own wispy little beard and a mini iPad to use exclusively for storing tunes I've heard on community radio stations and while pre-ordering my three-quarter latte? Stay tuned …

 

27th January 2013

How are your New Year's resolutions going a month down the track? Especially the one about trifle-induced kilos? Not good? Fear not – most of us have fallen off that wagon more times than bears thinking about.

If it makes you feel any better, I found a diary from when I was twelve years old and among my resolutions was a commitment to “get skinny”. Didn't work. In fact, nothing I've tried has worked. And I've tried more things than you. Trust me.

Firstly, I paid to go to weekly weigh-ins at a major weight-loss cult as a teenager to shed the kilos. Which I did. Mainly through the use of whipped skim milk as a snack. I'd throw half a cup of the stuff into the food processor and after a few seconds I'd have a cup of Nescafé-flavoured fluff. It satisfied me for roughly four minutes then repeated on me so badly I'd foam at the mouth like a distressed snail for the rest of the day. But “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, remember?

Next came a dodgy doctor. They don't really exist any more – but wow, did they ever set up shop in the early '90s! Admittedly, my “weight-loss specialist” was surprisingly spry for what I imagine was his 178 years. Like Nosferatu, he would seemingly float from room to room, with desperate fat people lining up for an injection of … something.

Every week I'd show up and bare my ever decreasing bottom for a shot of … what was that? Horse wee? Who knows, but it made me thinner and I was mad for it. And made mad by it. My bottom still shivers at the memory. I did ask him once what exactly was in the needle and he hissed, “What does it matter? Haven't I made you able to cross your legs like a lady?”

Also, he prescribed something that has now undoubtedly been banned by whatever authority it is that doesn't like people to die. These pills gave me heart palpitations, but in my mania I thought, “So what if I have a heart attack? I'm thinner.” Just madness!

I'd take one a day and forget about eating. I could not, however, forget the condition of my mouth as it was as grainy and dry as a Ryvita biscuit and emitted an odour not unlike something you might slip on in an off-leash dog park. I was awake and chattering constantly. I think I shed about twenty kilos in six minutes. And put on twenty-five kilos the minute I went off the mystery injections and banned substance and gave in to a meal consisting of fourteen forms of potato. I remember eating that particular dish like a wolfhound cross who'd been rescued by the RSPCA.

Down the track I joined another weight-loss club which ran meetings in a local church hall. I can't believe what happened here, but it did, and I am sharing it with you now. This organisation was loosely based on the global whipped-milk cult I mentioned earlier and had the most bizarre rituals I've ever come across. And remember, I'm Catholic.

Weekly meetings lasted for two whole hours and went in phases. Phase one was the weigh-in. It's possible I have stood on more sets of scales in my lifetime than anyone in the known universe, so I was essentially unperturbed by this part. But I should've known I'd stepped back in time, or at least entered a Narnia-style wardrobe, when the measurements were in pounds and ounces and the woman who recorded our weights used a quill. A great snack, she said, was cottage cheese and pineapple. On a Savoy cracker. Well lady, let me tell you, I know something here is crackers and it's not the Savoys.

Halfway through the meeting you'd receive your allocation of buttons. Yes, buttons. From the haberdashery. You'd get one for every pound you lost. The first few weeks after I joined I had a severe case of tonsillitis and was so sick I could barely eat, which is usually a terrible thing, except for when you're on a hell-bent mission for buttons.

I wanted those buttons. I was like Gollum for The Ring. I lost something like seven kilos in a fortnight, because I was basically dying, but I got sixteen whole buttons. Now, don't ask what came over me but I went home after those meetings and sewed the buttons onto a green felt bib I was given on joining and wore it every meeting around my neck like a dental patient.

After a month of massive weight loss I had shed more than anyone else and was crowned the Queen of the Club. This involved a ceremony where I stood in front of the entire “congregation” in a long green cloak (no doubt to match my heavily buttoned bib) while carrying a sceptre. Yes, a sceptre. I got to take home a fruit hamper comprising one piece of fruit brought in by every member of the group. I am not kidding.

I just googled to see if these meetings still exist, and they do. In fact, the one in which I was Queen is still going strong. They walk among us, people. Do not be alarmed. And don't forget to bring your bruised banana for the Queen's hamper.

So if your New Year's resolution is to lose weight, do not do as I have done. These days, I walk as much as I can, am teetotal and eat lots of vegies for fun. I am happier. Sure, I'm still heavier than I should be, but I have so much more time to enjoy life now that I don't have to sew on buttons, whip milk or proffer a cheek for a shot of “leg-crosser”.

 

3rd February 2013