Rednesday: Aprons

It's my grandmother's birthday today. The last photo I had taken with her before she died is this one, snapped at her birthday party last year by my sister Abby. She died a month later.

Chapter eight of the book my mum wrote about her experience of my grandmother's Alzheimer's starts with this paragraph:

My mother had been a balabosta, a Yiddish term for a person who raises housekeeping to the level of an Olympic sport. In her spotless kitchen, the balabosta cooks gourmet feasts for her family, and when they have finished eating first, second and third helpings, she insists they take leftovers home with them. All this she does week after week, apparently without effort, while wearing lipstick, French perfume, and an apron over her good clothes.

Even on my most house-proud of days, I could never hope to be as good a housekeeper as my grandmother was. But I do like to pretend I am a little like her when it's my turn to do the cooking and I skip from the oven to the table. I can't attribute my lack of cooking prowess to her, but I most definitely hold her accountable for my love of aprons.

(The last one reads: I cook in the kitchen, but I boil in the bedroom.)

Sharing Food

It's my niece Indigo's 9th birthday today and to celebrate she had some friends over for a slumber party last night. I went over to hang out with them for a while. What a great age 9 is — so mature yet still so gorgeously unselfconscious.

For dinner they each dressed half a homemade pizza base with their favourite toppings. Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for the eating as I had my own dinner to get home to.

It was my turn to cook, and on the way home from the party I was busy planning what I was going to make. But it turned out all I made were ooh and aah sounds as PJ had surprised me with this delicious home grown, home caught, home cooked meal.

The greens are all from our garden — silverbeet, spinach, broccoli, snow peas, sugar snap peas, spring onion, spearmint, wild rocket, broad bean leaves, oregano and parsley. The Redfin (English Perch) was caught by yours truly in the local lake the day before, and the lemon was gifted by some friends.

I like what David Graeber says in his book Possibilities:

Sexual relations, after all, need not be represented as a matter of one partner consuming the other; they can also be imagined as two people sharing food.

Pepper Turns Two

My niece Pepper turns two today.

Here she is with her great grandmother in April last year.

My grandmother died in January this year. I actually feel OK about her death today, and the unavoidable fact that she no longer exists. But what I can't quite get my head around is that two years and one day ago, Pepper wasn't here. Not her body, I understand that that took nine months to materialise, but her character; the seed of her, the way she relates to her world, the things she thinks about that cause her eyes to sparkle, her wonderment, that all these things were not too long ago, completely uncreated.

Happy, happy birthday, Pepsi!

Great Jones Books!

Before I met him, in one of his many incarnations, PJ owned a bookshop. The cardboard sign I'm holding here was once the side of a box of books he received when he had the shop, from US booksellers, Great Jones Books. He cut it out and kept it because his last name is Jones.

Since I first read the sign, I have exclaimed Great Jones Books! when something great has happened. Well, not every time, but sometimes. Like today, because I woke up beside PJ and it's his birthday.

He once told me that in Wales in the olden days, people were addressed according to their professions. My dentist, for example, would have been Amro the Teeth. My hairdresser, Renée the Hair. One of his nicknames for me is Mog, so sometimes he calls me Mog the Blog. While I call him, Patrick the Book, which most often gets shortened to simply, Books. And as I am Jewish, it also gets lengthened to Booksberg or Bookstein. (Not to be confused with my bookish friend Becky, whom I call Booky.)

So happy birthday, Booksberg! Thank you for sharing your wonder and your words with me.

91 Years

We celebrated my grandfather's 91st birthday today with a lunch in Melbourne in his honour. It was a small party – just his grandchildren, partners and great-grandchildren. It was such a nice afternoon.

Check out the ice-cream cake! It had a photo of our whole family printed on it in icing. I dread to think of what the ink was made from, but I'm still alive to tell the tale.

One of the highlights of the day was hearing Z say, 'Meg, you're delicious!' as he gobbled up my icing head.

Another highlight was watching my niece Pepper tracing her great-grandfather's hand. The outline of a life well lived. The baton of providence passed on.

Sound Check

PJ and I are going to our friend Jacinta's 40th birthday party tonight. I'm very excited. I love a good house party. We have just come back from her place now where we had sound check. PJ and I are singing a song he wrote and today between our usual quiet Saturdayings, we choreographed a dance routine to accompany. Goodness, did I just write I'm excited? Is that what these butterflies are?

Seeing Stars

I had the star on my left leg done first. It was a gift from my friend Gil for my 29th birthday. I bought the one on the right for myself, which I had done the same afternoon. After all these years, I am happy to say that I still love their symmetry, colour and positioning.

Unfortunately, this 18 year-old Belgian woman is not as happy with her stars. According to an article in today's paper, she fell asleep while getting three small stars tattooed on her face and woke up with 56. Oops!

Sparky

We recently finished reading Roald Dahl's Danny the Champion of the World to Z, a book that both PJ and I loved as kids. At the very end of the book, after the story has finished, is this page:

I agree with Dahl that a child would be happy with a parent who is sparky, but oh the wondrous joy of having two! And I know what I'm talking about here, because my sisters and I are lucky enough to have two such parents who fit this description.

My sparky dad is turning 62 today. Happy birthday, dad! Thanks so much not just for being my dad, but for being the kind of dad you are. I love you. xx

A Day on Earth

Learning from the elders.

Working in the fields.

Industrial revolution.

"Biophysics for self-liberty."

Hunting for food.

Riding off into the sunset.

The P's Knees

It's been nearly a month since PJ cut his leg with his chainsaw. It has been healing beautifully, though on Sunday evening when Z and I returned from Melbourne, he could barely walk. His kneecap was all swollen and inflamed.

He had to spend last night in the local hospital where they fed him antibiotics intravenously. At dinnertime, Z and I brought in a thermos of chicken soup and an apple cake, which Z decorated with birthday candles. It's not PJ's birthday for another couple of months, but I don't think he cared.

One Candle

My friend Crumbs and I have been friends since we were five. (That's 30 years!) Today her daughter celebrated her third birthday, so Z and I went down to Melbourne for her party. 

It was an afternoon of privileges – to have such lovely friends and to have known them all for so long, to have all this party food to eat, and to be able to travel by car, four trains and a tram in absolute safety without a hiccup.

Not so for so many. When we arrived in Melbourne we were met by 2,000 of Melbourne's Indian population who were protesting against the rising number of violent attacks against its community.

The protest began at the Royal Melbourne Hospital where an injured Indian student is battling for his life, and concluded at Parliament House with a candlelight vigil in support of the 500 Indian students who have been attacked over the past four years.

As we celebrated the wonder of Crumb's three year-old and sang Happy Birthday, I quietly dedicated one of the candles on her cake to the 500 students and their families.

One Whole Year

Exactly a year ago when I started this blog, the first words I wrote were: "A few weeks ago I was employed to write a series of short bios of a dozen mid-century furniture designers." 

The woman who contracted me to write the bios for her website was a furniture manufacturer who gave me this couch in lieu of payment. We had not long before moved into our new house, so we were rapt with the trade – content for comfort.

A few years before, the Australian Federal police paid PJ a visit to question him about an artwork he had made, which they considered to be seditious. When our new couch arrived, he laughed that when the feds came to question him again, they would see this plush couch and walk away because there's no way an anarchist would own such a bourgeois couch.

This couch has changed the way we live. Its size means that the three of us can lie comfortably on it together, which we often do of an evening reading books.

"Welcome along on my experiment," is how I ended my very first post last year. 12 months on and I still feel as though I am experimenting, just with a bit more practice.

Thanks so much for your company.

Here's to another year together.

J-Dog

My sister Emily's boyfriend, J-Dog is 30 today.

Not only is he great for Emily, but he is great for our whole family and great for you too if you happen to meet him one day.

He is remarkably thoughtful and funny and oh so lovely. Last year he did an impromptu act for one of our nieces at her birthday party, he sent us a thank you card after he stayed with us, and he makes breakfast in bed for Emily most weekends.

Happy birthday, Jono!!

We think you're just tops.

xx

Free Birth

Our friend Jacinta, who gave birth to both her sons at home, organised this peaceful protest this morning.

Photo: The very talented John Mayger

Click for bigger image

As of July 2010, all midwives in Australia will require insurance in order to be registered. Hospital employed midwives are covered by their hospital’s insurance policy or by membership of the nurses’ union. Private midwives need to be insured too but no insurer is willing to cover them. The Government supports private obstetricians with insurance but now refuses to help private midwives. 

No insurance = no registration.

Private midwives will have to cease homebirth practice, move overseas to work or face prosecution. Homebirth will be driven underground. Some women will birth at home alone without skilled, professional support. 

Whether you would choose homebirth or private midwifery for yourself is not the issue. As of July 2010, women’s choices around birth will be even more restricted than they already are. If women lose this option now, they will never get it back.

Doesn't every woman deserves the right to choose where, how and with whom she wants to give birth?

E's for Eternity

Happy birthday to my sister Eddie!

Eddie's not her real name. Her real name's Emily. But somewhere in the early pages of our childhood, my three sisters and I all decided to call each other Eddie. It made sense at the time, despite the occasional confusion.

The Hot Club of Cowtown have a song called Emily. My favourite lines are:

E's for eternity, M that she's mine,
I love you Emily, that's I-L-Y.

Because of the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, March 21 is considered the first day of the Zodiac year, which means March 20, today, is the last. So those who celebrate their birthday today are supposed to have the oldest souls of all.

In her wisdom I have learnt so much from her, but my favourite thing ensues from her name. Her initials are EAU, which is how I still to this day remember how to spell beautiful.

Howzat?!

A cricket cake for a cricket party. 

The weather just lovely. 

A long weekend. 

A boy turns seven and is joined by his friends who all wear white for the occasion.

Seven

Happy 7th birthday to our dearest Z!

As Z is with his mum for the latter half of each week, PJ and I arranged to meet them at a local café on their way home from school. 

Here is the birthday boy with the guitar we had given him moments beforehand, putting on a show for passers by.

Suitably Attired

Z recently heard a naked boy referred to as wearing his birthday suit.

Seeing me step out of the shower Z exclaimed, "Oh Meg, you're wearing your party clothes!"

In Absentia

This is us yesterday morning before all our lovely guests arrived.

I thought I could do it: separate the two halves of my day into happy then sad, but I wasn't able.

I will have other birthdays and other moustache and pancake parties but my grandmother will only ever die this once.

I love birthdays. Growing up in a family of four daughters meant that every year I got this one day all to myself, but yesterday morning at my party, try as I did to feel happy, I couldn't quite pull it off.

My heart was elsewhere.

Red Ecology

Dear PJ,

Thank you for everything you do always, but right now, thank you for this song and this film.

When I cut my metaphoric birthday cake every day and the knife comes out dirty, I'm really glad that the man standing closest to me is you.