Infancy to Adulthood

In a recent article, Forbes columnist Peter Robinson describes the scene of driving with his wife to take their daughter to the airport to go to college. It's an OK article, but what has stayed with me since I read it last week is the list of accomplishments Robinson assigns his 18 year-old daughter:

This product, our daughter, could bake a remarkably satisfying peach crumble, speak intelligently about Hamlet and Macbeth, play a shrewd, persistent game of tennis, perform a Chopin nocturne with only half a dozen mistakes, make her friends laugh out loud and braid her little sister's hair three different ways. No election to high office, no commercial undertaking, no literary or artistic attainment – none could equal the deed of nurturing a human being from infancy to adulthood to produce a product like this.

What a list, hey? As an 18 year-old, I would have liked to have made my folks proud with any one of those achievements. But something about this list has not sat right with me and I haven't known why.

We are going away on Thursday and this morning, as I added to our list of what to take, it occurred to me that Robinson's list is merely an inventory of skills that his daughter has learned and perhaps even mastered. As a list of feats, it's rather impressive. But it reads like a report card of competencies, and to me, lacks any kind of meaning.

Is she thoughtful? Does she hold the door open for people behind her? Is she kind? Is she polite and respectful? Is she concerned about her peers and the planet?

Am I expecting an unreasonable intimacy from a writer I've never met? Am I expecting him to value the same qualities in a person that I esteem? Or at 18, is one still too unformed by the world to have any real connection to it?

Empty Nest

For work and because of the threat of fire where we live I spent the last couple of days in Melbourne, while PJ worked in Sydney. We picked up Z and now the three of us are home and happy.

Earlier in the week the worst sound in the world was the incessant sirens of the fire engines on their way to the nearby blaze. 

Today the worst sound in the world is my own voice, unanswered by our five chicks and two beautiful hens. When I left for the train station early on Thursday morning I made the executive decision not to lock the chooks up. In case there was a fire, I liked the idea that they would smell the smoke or feel the radiant heat and escape to some place safe.

I am sorry to say that my decision killed them. Not by fire, but by fox.

This morning before I met PJ at the airport shuttle bus, I went to see The Water Hole exhibition at ACCA, which I loved. I'm not sure you can see from this photo but the discarded plastic water bottles form a giant nest on which sit dozens of abandoned eggs. 

To these birds that were born into the leftovers of our consumerables, and to our seven birds that were consumed, I say I'm sorry.

The Changing of the Guards

I have been working in Melbourne these last few days and spending nights at my grandfather's house with all the extended family.

At work I am stimulated and engaged and at night I fill my handkerchief with all the tears I have inside me as I worry about my grandfather and mourn my grandmother's death and deal with the abruptness of her final full stop.

Today at work during morning tea we watched Obama's inauguration speech and for the first time I was able to see my Booba's death in a wider context.

What's that line from Ecclesiastes? To everything there is a season.

Birthday, Deathday

My grandmother died yesterday and today I turn 35.

I am having people over at 10 for a morning of pancakes and moustaches, then this afternoon we will bury my Booba.

A few people have remarked how bad I must be feeling to have my grandmother's funeral on my birthday, but really I couldn't be more pleased. It means I get to see all my family and it means I will have her close to me.

If a birthday is a celebration of a life, then it feels appropriate that my day includes a celebration of my Booba's life too; her influence over me was a like a spell.

She lived her whole life for other people – she was a woman of her generation. But this afternoon will be just for her. We will honour her, cherish and remember and salute her and hold close all the memories of her that are our favourites.

I have a lifetime's worth.

The Last Page

Recently, Z, who's growing at an alarming rate exclaimed that all his clothes are shrinking. He gave us a fashion parade and put what didn't fit him into a bag I took to the op shop.

On the verandah of the op shop is a box of free things that are yours to claim if you so desire. On top of the box was a book called The Pirates' Tale that I took home for Z.

Most of the pages are stories unto themselves, such as:

A pirate found a house and opened the door and went in. It was dusty. He tidied it and dusted it.

And then:

One day the pirates got better and sailed away to the mountain and saw a shark and caught it and the pirates' new cat said, 'Meow meow.' The pirates said, 'Be quiet, new cat.'

And a few pages later is the last page; relief in a world of Hollywood endings:

Kill Bill

Billy, left, was getting worse. She had stopped laying, had gone off her food and was becoming increasingly antisocial. Unfortunately PJ had to kill her yesterday. I asked him how he did it, thinking I wanted to know, but when he said he wasn't going to tell me I was pleased.

Instead of letting Cuba and Dirt eat her, in case they too became sick, PJ put her in the compost. If she couldn't provide us with eggs, then let her decomposed little body turn to soil and help make our vegetables grow.

All day I have been thinking of these Monbiot words:

Darwinian evolution tells us that we are incipient compost... I like the idea of literal reincarnation: that the molecules of which I am composed will, once I have rotted, be incorporated into other organisms. Bits of me will be pushing through the growing tips of trees, will creep over them as caterpillars, will hunt those caterpillars as birds. When I die, I would like to be buried in a fashion which ensures that no part of me is wasted. Then I can claim to have been of some use after all.

Guest Blogger: ETG

A fortnight ago I invited a reader of this blog, ETG, to be the inaugural Guest Blogger in the Land of Meg. Ladies and gentleman, without further ado I present to you her post:

We have been cleaning out my grandfather’s garage. He died five years ago and now we live in the house that he shared with my grandmother. The garage has to go, being a relic of the age when Asbestos was considered the wonder product.

There was so much stuff in there to sort through. Sure, some of it was ours and a lot of our stuff was pretty easy to quickly assess and discard (unused paper plates from our engagement party in 1998??) but grandfather’s stuff was another matter altogether. As well as holding the sentimental value of things belonging to the only grandfather I got to know, these were the props of his story, the backdrop to his territory.

Where would you find grandfather? He was either in his armchair reading the newspaper or in the garage. This multitude of jars, tins and boxes were his collection. He had plans for this stuff. Who knows how many jars full to bursting with different sized nails, different sized screws. A 1920s fire extinguisher. His RAAF duffle bag. A shoemaker’s last, a paper bag of rubber soles, a jar of shoemaker’s tacks. Then a smaller paper bag of smaller rubber soles—for Grandma’s shoes. Who knew he repaired shoes?

It is all now amassed in the driveway. Some of it will just have to go to the local recycling centre being either unrecognisable or unusable but a lot of it will be kept, refashioned or reused by my father and me. Or just placed somewhere in memory of a man with plans.

Behind Me

5769

Happy Jewish New Year!

As tradition dictates, we dipped pieces of apple into honey, symbolising a healthy and sweet year to come, (the year 5769 to be precise).

Good things are indeed on their way. This afternoon we received a call from the company installing our solar panels to let us know of their arrival date.

And tomorrow PJ and I are off to Newcastle for This is Not Art.

From T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding:

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

Sydney Siding

We flew up early this morning to spend some time with PJ's family, as his grandmother died. Tomorrow is her funeral. I wasn't going to come but PJ's folks insisted, and very generously paid for my ticket.

What I enjoyed most about the day was talking to everybody, not just catching up, and that it wasn't Christmas, which is the only other time we come up here.

Christmastime seems to be so stressful for families, and it means nothing to me, but today I liked what we celebrated - a whole life lived and then concluded.

I can't remember what movie it was, just that it had Nicholas Cage in it. He was standing at a tombstone looking at the birth and death dates engraved, and the line between them.

"There's a whole life in that dash," he said.

World Dividers

One of the things I collect is World Dividers. You know when people say, the world can be divided into two categories; those who do such and such and those who don't. 

When people have their toilet separate from their bathroom, I think: the world is divided into two categories, those who decorate their toilets with art on the walls or flowers on the cistern or poems or postcards stuck up with Blu Tack, and those who don't.

Another one is: those who make lists, and those who don't.

My grandfather is a list maker. He wrote this list into the pages of his 1966 day planner and has been using it to pack with ever since.

He went overseas today for 10 days. We visited him last night after we saw my grandmother. He had his clothes laid out on the bed and his old diary open to this page.

Brrrm Brrrm

It took us several attempts at listing it on eBay, but we finally sold our Peugeot.

As part of our plan to reduce our cash and carbon expenditures, we decided that despite the inconvenience of being a one car family, having a second car was an indulgence we could no longer justify.

It's true we could plant 20 trees a year, or whatever the number is supposed to be, but to us, it's not about offsetting, but decreasing.

It was dark by the time the couple who saw it on eBay arrived last night. PJ took them for a drive into town so they could look under the bonnet under a street light. I had my knitting group over and we all oohed and ahhed when they told us they needed a bigger car because they were having a baby.

The car had become anathema to us and was beginning to represent the epitome of unnecessary waste, but even more so, what we are envisioning the world will be like when petrol hits $8 a litre and the majority of vehicles are rendered useless.

The couple drove up from Melbourne after work, stayed an hour, then left. I sat and knitted with my posse while PJ filled out forms and exchanged money for keys and papers.

It was such a relief to see the car's taillights head up the hill and out of sight, and to know that the car was going to a good home, brimming with new life to come.

Full Stops

Today at 12.30, several of my now ex-colleagues and I went out for dumplings to mark the end of my six-week contract. I have worked for organisations for a number of years that have been easier to walk away from.

As we departed, they to return to the office, me to catch a tram, I got to thinking about farewells.

I respect it, although it sometimes hurts, the way kids don't concern themselves with sentimental goodbyes. They don't look back - are ever-ready to throw themselves at the next adventure.

On the other hand, when I have travelled overseas, I have often felt jibbed of a good farewell. Most of the people I met exchanged email addresses instead of bona fide finalities.

I'm not talking about trimming the fat and neatening the edges, and what you might call closure. I don't think it's that that I am after. I think it's more a cross between closing one door so another one opens, and honouring each shared experience for what it was.

I guess I must also be talking about facing my own death, because isn't that what our mortality makes us do - become accomplished at not turning away from The Ends?