By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it. – George Burns.

My girl walks proudly on to the stage clutching her trumpet. She beams when she sees me in the audience and does one of those little low wagging of her fingers, a wave just for me. She takes her position up the back, which is disappointing because it’s difficult to see her; she’s a shorty … just like her mum. But I’ll know I’ll hear her—loud and clear. And I know what she is going to play, because I’ve heard her toot it over and over the past few weeks in preparation for the recital.

“Nonno says practice makes perfect,” my girl tells her dad and I one evening after we’d commented about a particularly long and particularly loud session of tooting. As she walks from the room her ponytail swishes, flicking up at us.

We joke about it later, when she is in bed, “Of course he wouldn’t mind all that tooting …” I say. I don’t need to continue, my husband is already laughing, knowing full well how deaf his father has become in recent years.

The conductor raises his arm and the grade four band lift their instruments into position.
Deep breath.
The concert begins.

A quarter of the way through I notice an odd noise. The old man next to me has fallen asleep. His head leans forward slightly casting a slowly rocking shadow on his neatly-pressed brown shirt. He is snoring. Breathy, old man snores. I glance over at his wife who is watching the children play, she looks at me and shrugs her shoulders a little.

There was a time in my past when I would have been impatient with someone doing such a thing. Falling asleep during my daughter’s concert. I would have found it offensive. I would have been embarrassed. I would have probably made some kind of coughing noise or clapped a little loudly in an effort to jolt them awake.
But now I feel different.
I feel a little chuckle welling up inside me. But I suppress it because I don’t want to disturb him.

At the end of the concert my girl runs up to me. “Did you see me Mum?” she says brandishing her shiny instrument. “Yes, I’m so proud,” I say. “You were brilliant!”
“Nonna, did you like my duet?” she asks.
“Yes bella,” Her Grandmother replies. “You played so well and I can tell it was Nonno’s favourite part too.” She leans in close to her granddaughter and whispers, “I know because he stayed awake for that part.” They laugh and Nonno smiles. But I don’t think he heard … because he isn’t wearing his hearing aid today.



Tonight when the sun goes down I will be raising a glass of Italian dolce Spumante to my Father-in-law. Proposing a toast to the gathered family and friends on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

I usually spend ages crafting what I will say at events such as these. But this time it was easy. One sentence is all I need.

To Dante,
I’ve never met a man who cares as much, or has worked as hard for his family, as you.
Buon compleanno.
Happy 80th birthday.





This post was inspired by the writing prompt: “What’cha goin’ to do when the sun goes down tonight?!” from Scott Peters. Thank you.
Memories are life.

“Look at life through the windshield … not the rear-view mirror.” – B. Baggett.

I have never run through a field of wildflowers screaming.
I have never enjoyed a cup of instant coffee.
I have never liked the look of liquid paper on a page.
I have never gotten blind drunk.
I have never liked the taste of raw tomato.
I have never thought I was good enough to be a writer.
I have never won a running race.
I have never liked the saying: “The grass is always greener on the other side”.
I have never liked the way I look.

I have been handed a bunch of wildflowers, that were mostly weeds, by a chubby handed little boy—and my heart screamed with happiness.

I have hand-ground freshly roasted coffee beans, brewed espresso shots and sipped that concoction with my eyes closed.

I have saved writing drafts, calling them version .1, then .2, then .3 and so on, then enjoyed looking back to see where I have come from.

I have experienced being drunk on life.

I have served raw tomato to my children from an early age. Because I do not presume just because they grew in my womb that they have the same tastes that I do.

I have realised that sometimes you just need to ignore your critics.

I have never won a running race but that doesn’t mean I feed my kids lame lines about participation being THE most important thing. No. Winning is important. Striving to do your best IS important. I don’t care if they win the running races of life, but I hope they win at the things that are important. Career. Love. Life.

I have always loved the saying “…that if you think the grass is greener on the other side, maybe you should be spending your time watering your own effing grass.”

I have really got to get over that. One day.





This post is dedicated to Bookboy. Thank you for a writing prompt that challenged my mind: I ran through a field of wildflowers screaming.

The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple. ~S. Gudder

subtraction

His eyes squinted ice-grey with anger.
His mouth flat lined.

Disagreeing with my father was nothing new.
This time however felt different.

I looked at him eye to eye. I was granite. Silent.
Then I stood.
He looked up at me.
I looked down at him.
He said, “I’m leaving. I will call you.”
He left.


multiplication

Dad put the book of times-tables in my hand. Then he marched me to my bedroom.
Don’t come out till you’ve learnt the sevens he’d warn.
All of them.
Then he closed my door.

I sat on my yellow chenille bedspread and looked at the numbers and crosses, I watched them blur.
Then I looked out my window.
Then I looked at my books. Arranged alphabetically.
I contemplated again if the Nancy Drew novels should now go under N or D since I’d discovered Carolyn Keene was a pseudonym. I decided on D.
I looked out the window again. Cursed the number seven.
Used the rudest words I knew.


Precisely one hour later he summoned me.
Then he stood me in the line of number-fire.

5 times 7!
8 times 7!
7 times 9!

In the beginning I didn’t hate math.

I just hated standing in front of my father…
getting the answers wrong
and
imagining that he thought I was a failure.


addition

I watch my husband sit with my daughter as she does her math homework.
She runs her fingers up and down a strand of her hair as he explains fractions by pizza slices. She writes down the answer then looks at him expectantly. He claps her back triumphantly and they move on to the next question.

Sometimes I watch, coiled tight, as he edges close to impatience. Especially when she needs to be told the same rule over and over again. That teeny-tiny part of her brain just occasionally seems to be like teflon for numbers.
But it’s funny how things add up.
He tells her the rule one. more. time. and suddenly it has sunk in. Planted.
Taken root.
She knows it. She beams. More back clapping.
“High five Dad!” she commands holding up both hands.
He waves his hands through the air and connects them with hers with a loud thwack.
“Ha!” she cackles as she slaps him playfully across the cheek. “You gave me ten! There’s your change!”
He grabs her. Holds her down in a clinch. The math book and grey lead and eraser tumble to the floor.
“Oh Dad,” she giggles rubbing the cheek that she slapped, “you fall for that dumb joke every, single time.”


division

He never did call.

My little girl reaches into the Scrabble bag and pulls out a tile.

She opens her hand ever-so-slowly and her face beams with alphabetty-pleasure as she immediately starts laying out her next word on the board.

She puts down a H connected to an A from the word “SPADE” followed by a P,P,Y.

“Happy,” she says triumphantly “that’s triple points!”

“No, it’s not,” her big brother says, “happy, strictly speaking, is not a beach word.”

We’re playing family-rules Scrabble.  And as we’re sitting around the garden table in the backyard of the Rye coast cottage, the theme-of-the-day is “beach”.

By our rules that means triple score for any word that is beachy.

My daughter looks at her big brother. She academy-award-dramatically wrinkles her nose, as if she has suddenly sniffed a vile-smell, then she pushes back on her plastic chair, stands up and tells us that she is going in to get a drink.

“Mum,” she says pointedly, as she walks through the door “would you like one?”

Her brother looks miffed.

“What did you expect?” I say to him. He shrugs, tells me he doesn’t really care, and gets up to go get his own drink.

I know world-war-three-and-a-bit is highly likely to erupt within the kitchen, but I just sit there, looking at the board and all the words that we’ve laid out this evening.

I’ve got one of those fancy Scrabble games, the kind in a lovely hard green tin with a board that has plastic ridges so the tiles don’t move all over the place. It’s nothing like the first board I ever played on, which was flat and came in a purplish cardboard box with the word Scrabble stamped in gold on the front.

I put my hand into the green drawstring letter-bag. I swish the tiles around feeling their smooth planes and listening to them clinking softly together and I remember all the times I reached my little girl’s hand into a plastic floral toilet bag at my Grandmother’s house, silently pleading to the alphabet-gods for an E or an A or any other letter that would save me.


Gran and I’d sit together at the colonial wooden table and play Scrabble for hours.

It was our kitchen then, all quiet, just the two of us.

Words and tea and the smell of Bournville hot cocoa warming in a little pot on the stove.


We played strictly by the rules. There were never concessions made because I was a child. She rested her elbow on an old dictionary, tapping her cigarette into a little ceramic ashtray and sipping her cuppa-tea… strong, no sugar and the merest dash of milk. Barely enough to colour the brew.

I worked hard to impress her and I swelled when she’d nod her head with pride at a word I laid out.

“That’s a beauty.” she’d say.

But even better than that was any time when the scores were tallied and she’d utter those magic words…

 “Aha! You’re beating me.”

Come to think of it… I’m sure that was her favourite part of the game also.


The kids have come back now armed with drinks and snacks.

“Well?” my daughter says “Is it a triple score or not?”

It’s hardly a tough question but I look at the board and think about my Gran again.


Those games with her really taught me about the worth of rules. In treating me as an equal player there were lessons to be learnt about the old-fashioned-values of getting ahead by using your brains. She never praised falsely. So achievement was more precious.
I grew up knowing that she valued rules. But I knew she valued smarts even more.




I received an early morning phone call. You know the kind…the ‘better come soon’ kind.

Last chance to say goodbye kind.


I walked slowly down the green vinyl hall of the hospital. Dread weighed down my heels.

In the little white ward the family I rarely saw, her children and grandchildren, moved away from the bed to the edges of the room, watching quietly as the black sheep walked forwards, readying words for a last farewell.

But my Gran,

my Scrabble playing,

word loving Gran,

wasn’t in that room.


Yes, there was still breath in the body. Raggedy gasps strangled by pethadine. But no Gran. 

The being on the sterile hospital bed was only skin and flesh and hair and hot, hot bones.
Burning bones.

The sticks that were once her softly rounded arms moved instinctively, throwing off the bedclothes in a primal need to be cool.


And she was naked underneath.


It incensed me that not one person was doing anything to maintain her privacy.

I buzzed the nurse and insisted that they bring one of those contraptions, the kind that raise the sheets up high off the patient. A cradle? The nurse said. Yes. Whatever the fuck the damn thing is called, just bring it. Yes. Please bring a cradle urgently, thank you. Oh, the nurse said, we don’t use those in oncology.

I wanted her body to be comfortable.

I wanted her soul to have dignity.

I told the nurse that now there were new rules.
I told her to go. get. the. cradle. immediately.


Then I left without saying goodbye.




I realise my daughter is still waiting for my decision on the whole is-it-a-triple-word-score issue when I have a belated-epiphany. It was my Gran who inspired my love of words. I’m a bit dumbstruck as to why I’d never realised it before.


I can see her now, wading in the water’s edge with me. She’s wearing bathers, one piece, with a marvelous brown and green seventies print and an attached swim-skirt, for modesty, even though she has loads of bosomy cleavage on show.

We’re making up a poem together, about the seaside, and as we come up with a new line she sings it out in her lilting Irish tone.

And she’s holding my hand tight as we rush in and out of the water letting the tide chase us and laughing when it swishes up our ankles.


God she had the best laugh.


At the end of our day at the beach she drove us home. I stood on my tip-toes, kissed her salty cheek and said goodbye.

“Never say goodbye darlin’,” she said “you always say Cheerio …because that way we’ll always meet again.”


“Yes,” I say, watching my daughter strike a victory pose. “I declare happy is certainly a beachy word.”
I look back down at the board.


“It’s most definitely a triple word score… my love.”

Respect your elders. -Mary Schmich

1979 

She sat very quiet. Some might say as quiet as a mouse, although really she was more of a chameleon. Merging with the beige couch, her little knees together, back straight, eyes looking, but absolutely no speaking. 

When it was time for dinner she was beckoned to join the adults at the table. In front of her the grandmother placed a fine bone-china bowl brimming with hot soup. It was thin with golden coloured slicks of fat and a twig of limp dill floating on top. She was afraid to eat the dill because she didn’t like the look of it. So she took her spoon and carefully maneuvered her way around the bowl, pushing the herb to one side and doing her best to avoid the lump of soft carrot that lay on the bottom. She would have liked to have a piece of the hard rye bread that sat in the silver bread basket, winking darkly at her from between a crisply folded cloth napkin. But not one person offered it and she would never reach for it, nor ask. So thoughts of sopping soup up with chunks of brown bread remained just that, mere thoughts in this child’s mind. 

After dinner she returned to the couch, knees together, back straight, eyes looking, but absolutely no speaking. The grandmother placed in front of her a rectangular box that she knew was filled with neat rows of black domino tiles. The grandfather smiled briefly and then returned to his adult conversation assured that his granddaughter was now well entertained. But dominos were not much fun to play with by your self. She touched the top of the box and slid the lid back and forth on the tiny wooden grooves. Then she wondered to herself if the dominos ever felt as though they were living in a coffin.

2009

She sat very quiet. Some might say as quiet as a mouse, although really she was more of a chameleon. Merging behind the beige couch, suppressing the giggle that bubbled up into her throat as she spied on her grandfather, walking backwards and forwards, ever so near and yet still ruminating loudly on where-oh-where could she possibly be? Finally, bursting with impatience, she leapt- arms wide open to surprise the old man who never failed to clutch at his heart as though the shock would be the very end of them all. 

He took her by the hand to the table where the grandmother had placed a hot bowl of penne to cool ready for her, white and floating in butter, just the way she liked it. The grandfather got her a soft bread roll and the grandmother gave her a glass of cool lemonade before they sat to their own meal of pasta drenched in red sauce and smothered in hard flakes of stinky cheese. 

After dinner they sat together for hours, slurping on orange segments and spitting lupini skins. They taught her the old village card game of cups and clubs, smiling at the grandfather’s obvious attempts of cheating by storing aces in his top pocket, purposely visible so that his granddaughter would be delighted at catching him out every single time. At the end of the game he played a trick that she adored, pulling a shiny gold coin from her ear. She smiled and laughed out aloud with the joy of it all- throwing  herself into his arms for a long hug which ended with two little kisses on his bristly cheek. Then he popped the shiny gold coin in her hand and kissed the top of her head in a quiet blessing of praise for the precious gift he had been given.

In the car I snapped open the bag and popped a black stick into dear hubby’s mouth as he drove. He snaffled it quickly and opened up for another. I had an instant flash back to the time of our early dating.

 Back then, as Uni students, we couldn’t afford too much so we’d drive to the closest Red Roo[s]ter and buy a large box of hot chips for around two dollars. We’d then go for a drive and- romantically- I’d hand feed him the greasy-sticks-of-potato-yum. We’d usually end up at Elwood beach to have a cuddle and lick the salt of my fingers- as we watched the moon drift over Port Phillip Bay. 

Those were joyful moments of blossoming infatuation. The biggest issue we faced was the weekly scrambling to find a freebie pass into our fave nightclub-so we could avoid the ten buck entry fee. We weren’t worried about cholesterol, or high blood pressure, or diabetes.

Nearly two decades on- I’m now feeding my husband licorice sticks.

“We’re getting old.” I said. He laughed.

But it’s true. We have swapped dancing at clubs till the wee hours of the morn for tango-ing stray children back to bed after bad dreams.

We have swapped long night time drives to hear the ocean caress the shore for short drives to cart children from basketball- to ballet- to birthday parties- to band practices.

We have swapped holding hands and whispering sweet nothings for messaging each other on Face Book. 

As I chew on this memory-evoking licorice I realize that ‘transitioned’ is probably a more apt description- than ‘swapped’. When did we morph from the free spirited pair into the “eat this it’s good for your bowels” couple?

I panic….Could this be the beginnings of a mid-life-crisis?

Then hubby looks at me, I know what he is thinking.

Next weekend we are getting us some red rooster chips.

The kids and I are lucky to have you in our lives.

Even if you do eat all the cheezels

xo

Dad, not one for warnings, took his DS console, which son had left on the couch, and hid it. 

Dad then hollered out- “and that’s the last you’ll see of your DS for a while young man!” to which we heard a low growl emit from said bedroom.

For a nano-second (and having watched too many eps of True Blood) it crossed my mind that our son had turned werewolf on us. But no- of course it was just the forces of impending teen-age-hood and the hormones involved. Hormones which will evolve my son from happy-go-lucky-boy into hairy-intense-man. 

 They didn’t call it puberty-blues for nothing you know.

Within fifteen minutes good natured son had returned and we received a hug and a kiss goodnight.

In the morning our son sat with me while he was eating his tub of breakky yoghurt . He stopped mid-mouthful and looked at me.

“Mum…” he said “I’ve really learnt something from last night…”

I felt a surge of pride bubble up inside.

“What’s that son?” I said

“If I ever have another tantrum I should take my DS with me.”

Behind the Hall of Preserving Harmony is the largest courtyard of the Forbidden city.

As some of our group, sweaty but determined, headed up the grand marble staircase I was distracted by a gathering of folk who seemed intent on trying to fan themselves while catching two wild children.

These kids were slippery indeed.

They sped up and slowed down to taunt the grownups who had now drooped- either exhausted from the chase or from the heat or quite possibly both. As I got a little closer I realized that the pair of terrors were dressed identically and were obviously twins. I’ve read that triplets and quadruplets were considered bad omens in Ancient China, but in a nation of family life governed by a one child policy I suddenly realized that a multiple birth would now be a different kind of omen.

Attention turned in our direction as the group watching the twins, act out all kinds of naughtiness, spotted my daughter. With her long dark-blonde hair and fair skin she had been treated as somewhat of a celebrity in Beijing. Every where we went people asked if they could take her photograph, posing with her and intrigued by her ability to speak rudimentary phrases of Mandarin- thanks to three years of weekly Chinese lessons at school. The Mother of the twins smiled broadly and waved her camera at us pointing at my daughter and then in the direction of her girls. Miss 8- who had begun to enjoy the Miley Cyrus treatment struck a pose and waited patiently as the Mother called her girls over.

The twins however weren’t all that interested in obeying.

They ran around their Mother, black plaits whipping the stodgy air and cackling at their own defiance. Everyone looked a little embarrassed and our guide looked away muttering  “spoilt princesses”.  The Mother- maintaining a composed face grabbed at the little boy standing next to her and pushed him into frame. He obliged instantly and beamed into the lens.  I asked if this was her son mistakenly now assuming that the twins were actually a trio, but got told no he was “just a cousin”. The girls did eventually saunter over and pose, curious perhaps as to how attention had so suddenly shifted away from them.

Miss 8 is now in our lounge room adding the final touches to her suitcase for her next big adventure- tomorrows grade three camp to Mt Eliza. Her big brother is giving her all kinds of advice like:

Don’t be scared of the flying  fox- it’s a blast.

And…

Just eat everything they give you or you don’t get any dessert.

And…

Watch out for the snakes and tigers (chortle, chortle).

She’s listening intently and throwing him a playful punch when she knows he is teasing her. He suddenly gets all serious and says “You know I’m going to miss you?” she gives him a quick hug and throws in another punch just to place the sentimentality firmly back where it belongs. “Muuuuuuum” he screeches “she punched me…”

My instant reaction is to think of the heavenly quiet that will transcend our home over the next three days. Ahhhhh no sibling rivalry! But then I flashback to those  twins, and China, and the One Child Policy.

As I continued my walk that hot, hot day I found it increasingly difficult to align modern day China’s family policy with that of the world of the Dynasty Emperors. In front of me lay Palaces- one more sumptuous than the last, erected to house the abundance of Empresses and Concubines whose sole purpose was to seed as many descendants as possible. These walls would have contained a bounty of brothers and sisters. Spoilt and plump and plotting. But now mostly families with only one child walk through the courtyards to sightsee the old ways.

And of course there are those families lucky enough to have twins.

Three days of peace and quiet will be lovely.

But to be honest I’m also looking forward to hearing my kids argue with each other again on Friday afternoon….

Her first camp.

I finally found the one I was looking for, a snazzy-surfy one that her big brother had used on his first camp. I was elated. Phew! I never thought I would find it in all that junk. “But Mum…” Miss 8 said incredulously “it’s a boy’s suitcase.” I looked at it.

Yes.

She’s right it is a boy’s suitcase.

When her big brother went to camp he didn’t mind taking the old red sheet that had the rip in the centre and the Frankenstein stitches. He didn’t even mind that he had a non matching pillowcase. But now I have a whole new ball game on my hands. Don’t get me wrong she’s pulled out her old jumpers and jeans…but I’ve been firmly instructed that the pyjamas must match (tick) and may I please have new volleys (tick-and fine with me- I don’t want her taking her good runners anyway) and was it possible if I had a girls suitcase- please Mum pretty please?

Boy oh boy girls are different.

Part of me can’t justify buying another case, and another part of me wants to get the coolest-grooviest-girly-case I can find.

I remember the day my Mum told me we were going shopping for my primary school camp. I was elated. We were going to the biggest Kmart in town (the one in Burwood) and I felt like the luckiest kid on the planet- I was getting new stuff! Driving along my dreamy thoughts of new sleeping bags and fluffy socks abruptly screeched to a halt as we detoured to the… doctor’s surgery. There waiting for me was a big-fat-juicy tetanus shot.

Tonight I’ve taken a picture of the snazzy-surfy-suitcase.

Tomorrow it’s going on e-bay.