The Windy City.

Hello Possums. If you were in Melbourne today, you would be forgiven for thinking its the Windy City.

I was in the beer garden of a Belgian Pub drinking cherry beer with D and a large group of her family and friends (still celebrating her 40th, Possums, only this time in Melbourne), and it was chilly. There was a cold wind blowing most of the day. As the sun went down tonight, I was jealously eyeing off someone’s coat. None of us had thought to bring one! This always happens at the end of the hot weather – we’ve lost the habit.

But I digress, because I’m not referring to Melbourne in the title of this post at all, but Chicago of course. The Windy City. I’m off to Chicago next week – just for a week. I’m attending a conference there, and this will be my first time in the US.

I have a good friend who travels a lot. Chicago is her favorite city, she tells me. I find this very hard to believe. As you know, I think Melbourne is really special.

How can someone who has grown up in Melbourne not choose Melbourne as their fav!

I am really curious now. Will I agree with her? (Can’t imagine it, just quietly).

I’m leaving on a jet plane…

Chicago here I come!

The Spoon Trick

Hello Possums. How many spoons can you balance on your face?

One is relatively easy, as modeled here:

However, a senior member of our sailing club found it very difficult. No matter how carefully he placed the spoon, and regardless of the angle of his head, he just couldn’t do it! After several attempts over this particular evening, he discovered that polishing his nose with his hanky was necessary before he was able to do it. (A friction thing – his nose just needed a buff).

He was elated when he finally achieved a balanced spoon.

One of the children on another table discovered that he could balance spoons on his ears. Then my second eldest daughter discovered that her cheeks had sufficient friction with which to counteract the force of gravity on the spoon.

When another sailing club member announced that the world record for spoon balancing was six spoons, all of the children and many of the adults set about trying to equal or better this record.

We achieved the record, and everyone cheered! Rosie was even able to take a sip of her drink with all spoons attached.

Six spoons, a world record!!

Conversations at a Cocktail Party 2

Well, Possums, the conversation continues!

At the hair dressers today, I put the question to Amy. She thinks and talks while she spreads colour onto my hair in two tones – Autumn tones. I relax and watch as her mind ticks away. This is a topic she is very comfortable with and has actually thought about before. She replies enthusiastically:

Absolutely, I’d love to have a penis for the day! There are so many things I’ve always wondered about.

But what would you do for the day?

Amy needed no time to think. I’d spend some time masturbating, then I’d like to see what it was like to put it into a girl…

You would do that?

Oh yes! And then I’d like to see what it was like to put it into a guy!

Raucous laughter.

Hey now, no one at the cocktail party thought of that! I suppose you could also find out what it was like to have it done by a guy too. They say that’s supposed to be pretty good.

Well, I’d spend a bit of time exploring that.

Finding the G spot?

Absolutely! Well, you can get these rubber things that suction onto the walls… I’ve got lots of gay friends.

Gee. My mind flashed back to the Borat movie and the image of his souvenir rubber fist, but I’d never heard of the suction idea. So you wouldn’t need any help with that part of it then.

Nup. It just suctions straight onto the wall. Amy mimes backing up to a wall (cheeky grin on her face). I watch her in the mirror in front of me.

Laughter.

Amy walks off to get the second colour tone, comes back and continues:

You know I’ve always wondered what all that fidgeting and adjustment is about. And I’d like to go for a swim in cold water to see if they really shrink. And to see what it was like to wake up with a stiffy. And to find out how much of my thoughts are sort of taken over by it behaving on its own…

Whether they really do have a mind of their own?

Mmmm. And I’d ask someone to kick me in the balls, just to see how much it really did hurt.

Raucous laughter.

And I’d like someone to lick me on the balls because that’s supposed to be nice, you know.

You’d need someone pretty willing to experiment. And you’d need much more than a day to get through everything you want to do.

A brothel?

Hmm. Yeah. A perfect solution! Would you have to explain it when you walked in?

Yeah, you’d walk in and say, I’m on a pretty tight time schedule here. So, can I have you and you and can you please kick me in the balls when we’re done!

Laughter.

And what about men, do you think they’d like to have a vagina for the day?

I think they should all have one for at least a month.

Great idea!

Yeah, and they’d have to have it with lots of pain and clotting so they think they’re about to die.

Raucous laughter.

It should be mandatory.

Absolutely. They’d understand then.

At what age do you think they should be made to go through this?

Eighteen. I think that if both sexes were made to swap for a month at this age then a lot of problems in the world would be avoided.

Silent contemplation.

Yeah, I think you could be right!

Oh yeah!

Both of us nod our heads and contemplate this idea further.

There you go, I’ll just pop the timer on and you can read a mag if you want.

Ta.

The Public

Hello Possums, don’t people ask the darnedest questions? Perfect strangers often feel quite uninhibited to ask all sorts of questions about your family situation, especially when you’re pregnant. But it doesn’t stop there! Let me give you an example of some that are frequently asked of me.

First, the person will exclaim something to the effect of, Oh four daughters, followed by one of the following questions (they never ask all):

Question 1. How did you manage that?

Question 2. Are you still trying for the boy?

Question 3. Are they all different?

I have standard replies:

Standard Answer to Q1. Well, we planned numbers 2 and 3…

Standard Answer to Q2. This is the dumbest question, partly because my youngest is now seven and I’m 43, and I know it’s not impossible but fair go! So, I therefore haven’t really thought of a good standard answer. But what I find is that if I just hold my tongue, and perhaps look with my eyes downcast, that the speaker answers their own question for themselves with the standard response (or should I say self-response, or reflexive-response):

Well, I suppose you love the ones you get, don’t you?

I nod, and although I generally feel sorry for the person because I think the asker of such a question and giver of above self-response would be full of their own regrets like a broken record stuck on the same track, I try to move on as quickly as I can.

Standard Answer to Q3. This is not a bad question but it certainly is an invitation to launch into a narrative if ever I heard one! This question is more fun and depending on the person it can be the beginning of a fun conversation (or not). The answer takes a little longer because I usually tell a story that illustrates their differences, here it is:

Well, say if I’m having a tanty, you know I’m ranting and raving around the house that I feel like a slave and can’t anyone in this house ever pick up their own dirty socks, and why is this apple core left here, and who spllt the bird seed, etc (you know the drill?), well all of the girls react in their own characteristic ways:

My eldest, Kathleen, hides from me. This could be by hopping into a cupboard or by going outside and climbing a tree.

Next in line, Rosie, will tackle me head-on. How dare you speak to me like that, OR don’t yell at me, OR you can’t boss me around. Usually hands on hips and ready for fisty cuffs (metaphorically), and has even been known to slam a door for effect as a warning not to bring my own tanty near hers.

Emma, my third, comforts me. She has been known to rub my back soothingly and caress me with gentle words. It’s OK mum, its alright, just relax, so you need some help, what would you like me to do?

Sally, my youngest takes it all very personally. She hates to be on the wrong side of the law and will do anything to be seen in a good light. It wasn’t me mum! she will say emphatically, and if she thinks I was directly accusing her she will run to her room, throw herself on her bed and cry her eyes out.

By the time I’ve finished that story, Possums, the person who asked the question either settles in for a good chin-wag and commences a narrative of their own, OR becomes lost for words presumably because they are thinking that I have a very dysfunctional family but are too polite to say these thoughts out loud OR they are too scared to ask another question for fear of an encore!

(I just had to write a post with the word darnedest in it!).

Sleeping Art

… by the face painter at the Melbourne Show.

The children loved it so much, they didn’t want to wash it off at the end of the day!

Which one is real?

Guess which one is real:

I’ll give you a clue: only one has their eyes shut!

Lessons in Morality 2

Hello Possums. It is a joyful experience to watch children forming their own moral understandings. I was privileged in such a way on an occasion that would never have happened if I was parenting by the book. If I had been a vigilant parent, Sally would never have been exposed to Raw Comedy. As it was, she was accidentally placed in a situation that called for moral judgment.

Raw Comedy.

I recently got an ipod and worked out how to download podcasts the other day. I was so excited that I downloaded over 100 free programs including how to meditate in 14 lessons, how to speak Italian in 18 lessons and the Tripple J Raw Comedy Finals, among others.

My dad also gave me a gift voucher for my birthday in February (the 26th, although this is irrelevant to the story), and I spent it on some cute little portable speakers to pop the ipod into. I was playing with these new ‘toys’ in between getting dinner ready last night and decided to play the comedy show while I was cooking.

Sally, my youngest child, is still at the age where she enjoys playing where she can also see and talk to me. She is seven. While I was cooking and listening to my podcast, Sally set up her toys on the rug in the dining area, which is really in the same big room as the kitchen. She was involved in imaginative play and I couldn’t really tell whether she was listening to the podcast or not at first.

This particular podcast was of the South Australian finalist of the Raw Comedy competition on 28th March 2006, Beck Hill, doing her winning stand-up routine. Her last joke involved the image of a dwarf who’s scarf was dragging on the ground because it was a scarf made for a “normal-sized” person. A friend of the dwarf noticed the scarf, picked it up and held it off the ground as they walked through a muddy section of the park. The punch line was, and I couldn’t help thinking that it looked like a girl taking her pet midget for a walk. Ha ha ha.

By this stage, Sally had stopped what she was doing on the mat and was listening to the podcast. She had a serious look on her face. Neither of us laughed at the punch line. She came over to the bench and watched me cooking for awhile. I was half thinking about the politically incorrect nature of the joke, surprised that a young comedian would resort to this style of joke and that it was endorsed by her audiences as well as the Raw Comedy competition, and half filled with regret that Sally had been exposed to it.

Had she understood the put-down?

Would she think it was funny or even OK?

I watched Sally leaning on the bench, her little brow furrowed with the effort of contemplation, and wondered what sense she would make of it all. I was almost expecting her to ask for an explanation of the “joke”.

Finally she looked up to me with an expression of concern in her deep brown eyes and said in a serious tone of voice,

Mum, what if you were a midget and you were listening to that?

 

Lessons in Morality 1

Hello Possums. Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if we could look at it through the eyes of a child.

This is the first of a series of stories about my moral learnings at the hands of 7 year-old children. This story is about my second eldest daughter who is now twelve, but was seven at the time.

Rosie and Her Buddy

At my children’s primary school they have a buddy system. This is a peer support system whereby a preppie (child in their first year of school) is assigned a buddy who is in grade 5. They continue to be buddies right through the following year also, when they are in grade 1 and grade 6 respectively. Once a week, the grade 5 or 6 buddies visit the grades of the younger children and together they complete a task. It is usually a task that the prep or grade 1 would need help with, so the children work together to complete it. Often buddies play with each other informally in the play ground at recess and lunch time too, as cross-age friendships form.

Rosie became very close to her buddy when she was in prep and the relationship continued through her grade 1 year also. Rosie and Emily became friends and would often spend time together unofficially. Rosie told many a story about what she did with Emily during these years. Once Emily hand-made a little school uniform for Rosie’s favorite Groovy Girl doll that she often brought to school. We heard so much about Emily that we felt we knew her really well, even though we hadn’t met her.

In term 3 of Rosie’s grade 1 year I worked with the teachers at the Primary School in their classrooms as a visiting science teacher. It was wonderful working with primary aged children because they are uninhibited with natural curiosity and enthusiasm. It was one of my most rewarding teaching experiences. My own children were proud to have me working in their grades too. I worked one day per week at their school for a term, and went into each classroom twice. Soon the day came when I started working with the grade 6 classes. On that morning, Rosie was really excited that I would be working in Emily’s grade.

I introduced myself to the grade 6 class, explained that we would be making crystals and asked them if they had ever seen a crystal before. The children were enthusiastic and contributed to the discussion freely. One of the children shocked me when she spoke, but I tried not to let my shock show on my face. In fact shocked is an understatement, I was in fact horrified. This child spoke through her neck. She had obviously had a tracheotomy because there was sort of a hole in her neck, with some sort of insertion to maintain the opening. When she spoke she sounded like Darth Veda. The shock of the noise registered with me first, and then the horrific nature of her experiences overwhelmed me. Here was an 11 year-old who had obviously suffered in many ways. My emotional response was hard to contain. If I had to describe it I might choose the words: revulsion, pity, remorse, awe. Her acceptance by other children in the grade also astonished me.

After the introduction, the children began to set up the equipment at their tables. It was during this more informal part of the lesson that the girl with the tracheotomy came up to me and introduced herself as Emily.

Not once in all of the stories that Rosie told about Emily did we ever hear that Emily had a hole in her neck or that she spoke in a spooky, raspy way through it. All I had known about Emily in the eighteen months prior to this was that Rosie loved her and that she was a kind and gentle friend. As far as Rosie at seven was concerned, the other stuff didn’t even rate a mention!

The Red Tent

Hello Possums. As you know I am relatively new to the blogging world. Even in this short time, I have met some beautiful writers (or should I say bloggers) on my journey into cyberspace so far. I enjoy reading their blogs and they occasionally visit me here at epossums too.

It’s a strange thing really. I can’t help trying to fathom how meaningful these connections are and whether they are as meaningful as face-to-face meetings. They are certainly a different phenomenon! But as I become more involved, I am coming to believe that cyber connections are meaningful in their own right.

I was invited by Charlotte of Charlotte’s Web to ‘meet’ her friend in Germany, Lia, with a view to possibly contributing to The Red Tent blog site – a space where issues important to women are published and discussed. This I did over the weekend.

Thankyou Lia, for publishing my words on The Red Tent!

Possums, I hope you pay it a visit and leave your mark via the comments sections, not necessarily on my post but one that appeals to your imagination or your passion – there are lots of interesting topics there.

Strengthening connections between women can only be a good thing!

The Horse Whisperer

Hello Possums. Do you belong to a book club? Mine has been going for over ten years. We meet in the evening once a month in the lounge of a large hotel in Melbourne, order drinks (sometimes hot chocolate and sometimes wine), lounge back in the comfortable winged arm chairs and sofas and talk about our latest book and each other’s lives.

Amongst the individuals in my book club, I have a reputation for an ability to remember books. We discussed this so-called ability of mine once in the context of a discussion about reading speed:

Fran: Oh I just skimmed that bit because I didn’t think it was important.

Me: Do you skim sections of books?

Vicki: I read quickly and skim occasionally.

Fran: Yeah, I did a speed reading course once. I read quickly because I can’t wait to uncover the plot. That’s why I often reread books: so I can take it more slowly the second time.

Janine: I’m a fast reader too.

Me: Wow, I read every bit, and concentrate on every word. I can’t bear to skim. If I find myself not concentrating on a page I reread it – sometimes more than once.

Lucy: I never reread pages. If I’ve tuned out over a paragraph or so, then I just think it mustn’t have been that important. I often reread entire books though.

Jane: I reread my favorite books over and over again.

Lucy: Me too.

Janine: If I don’t have anything new to read I just reread what’s on my shelf. I can’t bear to have nothing to read.

Me: I never reread a book, because I remember it and I have a reading list stacked to the ceiling anyway.

Fran: It must take you ages to finish a book.

Me: Yeah, I’ve always been a slow reader.

Fran: Well, that’s probably why you always remember the books so well.

It became obvious to me that I was unusual amongst our book club members. I was the only person who never reread books, and I seemed to be the only one who lingered on words and phrasings and could remember books beyond twelve months.

I mention this ability of mine because I want to talk to you about what I remember from reading The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans, even though it was three or four (or more) years ago that I read it. I also saw the film, but the book was better and the scenes I remember are not from the film, but from the book as they impressed me at the time of reading. Overall I did enjoy the book.

An overall impression of the book is that you can tell it was written by a man. It has a masculine quality that is hard to define in words. It is the way he attends to various scenes, what he focuses on and what he leaves out. This is not a criticism, but a point that I found interesting, as a reflection upon my own sensibilities in relation to the author’s.

There are three scenes in the book that stand out to me in my memory of it: The crash at the beginning, the sex scene and the death scene at the end.

The crash at the beginning was so graphically described and so suspenseful that I couldn’t put the book down. It caused a pit in my stomach and when the truck hit the girls and the author described the slow, gruesome, drawn-out aftermath, I cried and cried. Because of this first scene and the consequences, I put my life on hold for that day and sat at home on the couch by the bay window in the lounge room and read the entire book in one sitting. This is not usual practice for me. I generally read in the evenings in bed, and only during the day when I’m on holidays.

The sex scene struck me because, as I said to Miss M, as far as female fantasy goes, the author lost the plot here. Let me see if I can find a direct quote for you. I have remembered the gist of it, but word for word might be more fun…

Bindi takes a short break grabs the book off her shelf and flicks through to about where she would expect to find the sex scene, about half way through…

OK, I found it, pp410-414 of the Corgi edition, 1996…

Phew, maybe I was wrong! It’s definitely more steamy than I remembered, and I now think I’ve been conflating this with the scene on pp388-89, which really was penis-centric (but for a good reason, I now see, hmmm). Too graphic to quote here…

Wow. I might have to reread this!

But before I do, I better finish this post. Yes where was I…

The last scene, oh yes. At book club, we discussed the logic of killing him off in the last scene. I thought it was futile and too dramatic and that making a martyr of the Horse Whisperer was not necessary to the thread of the story. For me, such an esoteric ending didn’t gel with the gravelly, realistic quality conjured in the rest of the book. Fran thought that it was necessary for him to die, as a sacrifice to the well being of the family unit. She also felt that it was a correct ending for the the Horse Whisperer himself, who now found himself incomplete without Annie. After discussing this at length she and I agreed to disagree. Martyrdom makes me cringe, big time. And I believe there is always a life to live, even after love and loss.

Now back to that section of the book, see ya.