Is It Just Me? (5 page)

I ask for advice all the time. My main sounding board is my fella, The Chippie, who gives great, no-nonsense and harshly concise advice that often contains an expletive. I like it that way, because more often than not in the lead-up to actually asking for said advice I've spent countless hours umming and aahing and writing lists of pros and cons. By the time I get around to asking his opinion I'm usually so confused I need a verbal smackdown.

For example, when I was making a huge decision to leave a job for another I endured most of the indecisive torment on my own. Until I'd come to an impasse. I broached the topic with The Chippie and here's how it went:

“So … what should I do?”

“You like hanging out with your kids. Take a job that makes that happen. And if it doesn't work out, then do something else. I'm going to the shed.”

And so the decision was made.

I seek counsel on matters of couches, throws and shrugs from my friend Jane. She's earned her stripes through her passionate hatred of orange. Anyone who feels so strongly about a colour must know all there is to know about interiors. She also multi-tasks as an adviser on parenting – her daughter is spirited, polite and artistic and maybe I want one just like that.

I am constantly asking for advice and eagerly await responses from my crack team of clever friends. But what about advice that is given when you didn't ask for it? Has this ever happened to you?

This week I have received no fewer than three pieces of unsolicited advice and, as a result, I have experienced unprecedented levels of huffiness. First, a no-brainer. Someone emailed me with advice on weight loss. It didn't have the subject “Lose that jelly belly NOW!” – I have a spam filter for those. It was from, I think, a nutrition student and probably made a lot of sense, had I read it all. But I didn't ask for help or advice from this person and it annoyed me. It doesn't take a genius to know I am overweight but is it anyone's right to assume I need advice on the matter, or indeed that I want to change or am not already seeking advice elsewhere?

The next day I received an email from someone instructing me on the dos and don'ts of writing a column. I thank you, by the way, and I hope I'm doing an all-right job. I love writing these pieces but I am under no illusion that I am the next Proust. I have in the past solicited advice from people I admire, but the difference is I asked for it. The notes in the email I received were handy. But insulting. As I was reading it, all I could hear was my internal dialogue saying, “Clearly I'm bad at this and I didn't even know it.”

Which brings me to the last bit of unsolicited advice I got in my inbox. This one happened yesterday. And it involved the P word. Parenting – there is no more sensitive topic. The person who sent the email thought I'd be “interested in attending a parenting workshop”. Hold up? As a participant? Yes: as someone who wasn't “enjoying their children as much as they should” and could work on being a “confident and calm” parent.

It's not often I talk to my iPad. Apart from the occasional “Yes!” after nabbing a set of old school lockers or a
Toy Story 3
Zurg figurine on eBay, our relationship is generally a mute one. But on this occasion I looked at its screen, cosy in a case my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday, and said, “Oh. My. God.”

Parenting workshops are a great idea and provide support and ideas for people who need them. FOR PEOPLE WHO NEED THEM. I'm not saying I'm a perfect parent but how you raise your kids, along with every other thing you do in your life, is up to you. If we identify parts of our lives that are causing us concern, then we have the right to seek advice. What is crucial, though, is that we come to identify our problems and shortcomings ourselves, not have them brought to light by people who are making bold assumptions based on, well, nothing at all.

We can almost cope with unsolicited advice from people within our lives but when it comes from those you've never met, who've never seen your home/what you eat/how you cope with your kids in the midst of a supermarket meltdown, then “helpful pointers” are not only ridiculous, they're hurtful. And only fuel the insecurities that threaten to slow us down when we're all just doing the best we can.

 

1st July 2012

I have known my partner for just over five years. In that time we have had two children, signed on for a crippling mortgage, built a gigantic deck, installed a remote on our fifty-year-old garage door and located all the local pubs where “kids eat free”. As you can tell, all the important stuff has been achieved with great speed or, as my dad says, “You don't muck around, do you, darling?”

One of my life's regrets (apart from not being born Greek … the gyros, the plate smashing, the abundance of family, dancing and spits over the barbecue in the backyard) is that I met my partner when he was thirty-two years old and not when he was one day old.

Weirdly, we grew up within about four kilometres of each other, he with his brothers, and me with my sisters. I think we even spent our pocket money on lay-bys at the same toy store called Griselda's. Great times.

Luckily, his father made movies. Lots of them. In the early '70s, he invested in a Super 8 camera. No doubt, it would have been a massive outlay because, from what I can gather, back in the day blocks of land were sold for $5 a square foot, and TVs were roughly $4 million. Sure, seems fair. Anyway, my father-in-law set about documenting every baptism, birthday, picnic and backyard burn-off that occurred in that family from about 1972 to 1983. The eight-millimetre film was then left in a box for twenty-five years or so until about two weeks ago, when my partner, The Chippie (aka the second-born son), took them all away and had them converted to DVD.

What happened next was one of the most memorable days of my life. Because I pressed play and there he was: as a baby, as a boy. The man I knew better than anyone, in a time before “we” even existed. His first birthday party, in 1976, was held in a garden shed, the table piled with Iced VoVos, home-made chocolate cake and bright-orange cocktail frankfurts. The chubby blond baby in the metal and orange vinyl high chair looked bewildered by the fuss. His Uncle George, resplendent in Barry Gibb-style chest hair and an open-neck terry-towel tee, tenderly ran a hand over the birthday babe's round little head in a gesture of such familiarity and love that it caught in my throat.

The films are achingly sweet – and hilarious. Outside a cathedral on the occasion of one son's baptism, the lens swiftly veers from a cavalcade of safari-suited parishioners to an unfolding drama in which a Hillman Hunter is in flames in the middle of the road. Reminded of the scene, The Chippie's dad exclaimed, “That's right! A car exploded!”

I'm a naturally nostalgic person, so these home movies, hours of them, are my idea of heaven. In their flickering frames, I saw faces that confirmed with one look the kind, memorable people I'd only been told about. The Chippie's paternal grandmother passed away decades before I came on the scene and I'd heard wonderful things about her. Gentle, they said. And sweet. And funny. And what a cook! To see her, fussing in the kitchen and cheekily shooing away the Super 8 with a tea towel, or sitting quietly on the couch as the family socialised around her, confirmed without words the kind of woman she was. I felt I'd met her.

The Chippie's family knew how to live large. Weekends were about charred snags on makeshift barbecues, kung-fu fighting under the Hills Hoist or driving the Torana to a sunny spot to feast on egg sandwiches and Auntie Norma's world-famous cakes. They got out and about en masse. Not to theme parks or shopping centres or the movies. Just being together was the event. It's inspiring.

My favourite scene is in the lounge room of the old house where The Chippie grew up with his parents, brothers and his blue-collar, happy-faced Grandfather Popsy. Popsy was a mountain of a man who raised his daughters, one of whom is my mother-in-law, after their mother was taken suddenly by breast cancer. I'd heard he had a big heart. Now I could see it. Because there he was, silently, on my TV, shiny with joy, in his impossibly crowded lounge room, dancing what looked to be the dance of
Zorba the Greek
. These, I thought, are clearly my kind of people.

I believe in fate. Perhaps my yearning to have been born Greek is a nod to my children's great-grandfather, who, despite having been born Irish Catholic, could summon an internal bouzouki with the best of them.

 

8th July 2012

Everyone is making bucket lists. A bucket list, in case you haven't heard, is a list of things you want to achieve before you kick the bucket. Common activities on this list include sky­diving, riding the Orient Express and learning to cha-cha. You get the drift.

I have always found the term obnoxious, like when people put their hand up and say, “Too much information.” It just sticks in my craw. Or maybe it touches my immortality nerve. I haven't bought life insurance, either – because, like my “cousin” Bella Swan from
Twilight
, I plan on living forever.

Instead, I'm putting together a reverse bucket list of the things I'm not going to do before I perform my final shuffle. This seems so much easier to achieve. So, here we go:

I will never …

 

1. Learn to make pasta. I've attempted this and my kitchen ends up looking as if the marshmallow man from
   Ghostbusters
   has left leprous parts of himself all over my benchtop. The pasta turns out to be a cross-breed between Clag and rubber bands. San Remo will do me fine, thank you.
   
2. Jump from anywhere high (attached to a parachute or a perky other person). This has zero appeal. People say it makes them feel alive. You know what makes me feel alive? A strong coffee. On my own. In a cafe courtyard. No emergency straps required. Which brings me neatly to …
   
3. Order skim milk. Takeaway coffee is wildly overpriced, and yet I buy it. Indeed, I worship it. Why would I pay good money for sugary, blueish milk when I can get the good stuff? I can tell when a barista has mistakenly used skim in my double-shot flat white by looking at the bubbles. They look like detergent. And taste like it, too. Pass.
   
4. Be horrified when my children swear. I wish I could be better at this. But I just can't. Every time my three-year-old drops the Sh-bomb, I have to bury my face in the cupboard so he can't see that I think he's funnier than Tina Fey. Bad Mummy.
   
5. Grow anything resembling vegetables in my patch. No matter how I try, my parsnips look like chicken bones, my rocket is positively Jurassic, and my zucchinis could give Dirk Diggler a run for his money.
   
6. Align the number of books I buy with the number of books I can physically read. I've done a little maths, and if I were to read all the books I own, I'd be horizontal for 243 years. Fine for Nosferatu. But I have to work.
   
7. See the pyramids. Why?
   
8. Climb a tree. See above.
   
9. Read
   Fifty Shades of Grey
   . Controversial, I know, but I have no interest. I was sitting on a plane next to a woman who, with a sneaky smile, ripped her copy out as soon as the spiel about the oxygen masks was over. I read two lines over her shoulder, and the woman gave me a dirty look as if I was the creepiest person around. Hey! Take it easy. I'm not the one with a thought bubble over my head with a throbbing gland in it, lady. Sheesh.
   
10. Buy a sports car. I'll never get this. I love station wagons because they're practical. Fast cars can be as fast as they like but the speed limit is the speed limit and no matter how much car you have, you still have to stick to sixty. It's like attending a luau: there may be a whole suckling pig but your stomach can only take so much. My friend, who has a car roughly the size of a nit, did a big supermarket shop at Christmas and had to call me so I could take some bags home for her. That's right. In my station wagon.
    
11. Get a Brazilian (again). Devotees of this brutal, humiliating procedure insist it's the best thing since Stevia, but I tried it once and I had to book in for therapy. The beautician told me, while my leg was over her shoulder, that her oldest client was seventy-seven – which adds a whole new disturbing vibe to
    The Golden Girls
    .
    
12. Skin a kangaroo tail. That's right. Skin a kangaroo tail. My friend, who works with indigenous communities in the NT, wanted to do something special for her friends. She googled a recipe and off she went. Step one: skin tail. These tails are roughly the size of a pool noodle, but covered in hide. When I left her, she was steaming each fur-covered pool noodle and peeling it millimetre by millimetre. She was in a sweaty frenzy, and muttering, “Maybe there was a reason they traditionally throw these in the fire first.” I didn't have the heart to mention that big groups of people are usually happy with lasagne.
    

 

15th July 2012

What is your marital status?
It seems like such an easy question to answer. But it isn't. I have two small children and a giant mortgage and a wonderful partner to whom I am totally committed. But I am not married.

I always squirm at the question because I'm not married, but the other option is “single” and, Lord knows, I ain't that, either.

The fact that I have never tied the knot hasn't been due to a philosophical stance. Unlike Brad and Angelina, I've never said I'm waiting for marriage equality before heading down the aisle to a Shania Twain song. I kind of just never got around to it. Well, why not?

We've all seen the TV wedding shows and lost count of the number of scenes in which, eyes wet with tears, a woman with newly visible collarbones looks down the lens and says, “This is the day I've been dreaming of my whole life.”

I was never one of those. As a child, I never dreamt of a wedding. I was mad about having babies and nursed kittens, dolls and, more alarmingly, a wheat bag in a bonnet.

But I never played dress-ups in my mother's wedding frock. In my imaginative games, even Barbie and Ken were living in sin. I don't think I was an early feminist; marriage just never struck me as a milestone.

My Barbie was always more focused on remodelling her living room and providing for Skipper, who was her little sister, personal assistant and foster child on a rotating roster. Sometimes Ken was gay. And everyone knows gay men can't get married (well, not in Australia).

Don't get me wrong, I love weddings. I am always the first to weep at the vows. It is such a beautiful, raw moment when, in front of everyone the bride and groom hold dear, each says they love that one person the most of all. I tear up just thinking about it.

So why haven't I done it?

I was “with child” about a year into my relationship with my fella. The simple answer is, we just didn't make it a priority and then – boom – we were having a baby, and getting married felt like asking someone who had just eaten an entire Black Forest gateau if they'd like a slice of cake. Redundant.

There is also the small issue of my very shy partner. His idea of fresh hell is to be looked at, even adoringly, by hundreds of loved ones. To add a cake-cutting photo opportunity and a slow waltz to Aerosmith's “I Don't Want to Miss a Thing” to this scenario would bring on months of counselling.

I've never been officially asked, either. I'm old-fashioned in that I'd feel weird getting down on one knee and asking a man to marry me. I have no problem being the breadwinner. But marriage? I think it'd be up to the fella.

And then maybe also I've never been thin enough. Giant white frocks are the natural enemy of size-22 women, of which I am one. I remember hearing Dawn French, the curvy comedian, talk about her wedding in the '80s to funny fellow Lenny Henry. She starved herself down to a size 10, got hitched, then had to do it all again a couple of years later so she'd recognise the woman in the photos.

So now here we are. Five years down the track with my bloke. Totally committed, two gorgeous children, a beautiful blended army of mutual friends.

My dad has stopped asking me when we're going to get married. A traditionalist, it took him some time to get his head around the fact that his daughter was living in sin, but when he saw how my man could hang a door and change a nappy, he knew he'd got a bona fide son-in-law – even without the papers to prove it.

I'm organising a Christmas-in-July party for tonight. Thirty-five of our nearest and dearest buddies are going to indulge in amazing French food at my favourite restaurant. Parlour games will not be out of the question, and someone will probably dress up as a wonky Santa and give out stupid presents.

A few of my friends have asked, “Is this one of those secret weddings?” and I admit I did think about popping into the registry office, making it official, then celebrating the certificate with all our friends. My partner has always said he wants to get married but doesn't want the wedding. I'm not mad on a registry-office affair. I think I'd be wanting to register my car, too, in a two-for-one deal.

So it leaves us happily together with no papers. And in the end, I suppose, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

22nd July 2012