Ghostbusters

This is one of the postcards on PostSecret this week.

I was eleven years old when Ghostbusters first came out in Australia. It was one of the first movies I can remember reading about and counting down the days till its release.

I remember coming home from school camp to learn that my mum had taken my sisters to see it without me. I was devastated. She told me she enjoyed the film so much she was happy to see it again.

I remember sitting beside her in the theatre as the lights were going down, my legs sweaty on the big vinyl seat. I was so overwhelmingly excited, I can still remember what I was thinking:

I. Am. Just. About. To. See. Ghostbusters.

I still have those enormous rushes of excitement. They have nothing to do with the film, but precede occasions that I am looking forward to enormously. My Ghostbuster moments.

Dear PJ's Parents,

Thank you so much for the dinner voucher you sent me for Stepmother's Day. I used it last night and shard a delicious meal with PJ. We felt so privileged to be eating so extravagantly and appreciated every mouthful.

As we were leaving the restaurant we chatted to a woman we know who works there. Knowing that I had a voucher she asked if it was my birthday. She looked stunned when I told her why I had received it and from whom.

She too is a stepmother, but unlike me, she was not recognised or acknowledged on Mother's Day. Not by her stepkids, because they don't want their mum to think they align themselves with her, not by her partner who takes for granted everything she does for his kids, and not by herself, because she didn't know she was entitled to.

Thank you for acknowledging my role. As the new partner, I have insecurities about Z's feelings towards me; that he, as well as everyone else will forever compare me to his birth mum, PJ's ex-wife, your ex-daughter-in-law.

All anyone wants is to be seen and accepted as themselves. The thoughtfulness of your gift made me realise that I am.

Much love to you both from me at the kitchen table,

Meg

The Dance of Anger

A while back I remarked to a friend how I don't know anybody who deals well with anger. She said that's because you're not supposed to; that anger by its very nature clouds and distorts. 

Since then I have been a spy in the house of anger. When and how is it OK to express? What's appropriate? Why is it that an angry woman is looked upon as unladylike and troubled if she chooses not to suppress her emotions?

I never learned how to be angry. As I mature and open my eyes I see more clearly the injustices that I have accepted because being angry is something that good Jewish girls just don't do.

From page 1:

Women, however, have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats. It is our job to please, protect, and placate the world. We may hold relationships in place if our lives depended on it.

Despite its title, this book is not some hokey-pokey wishy-washy new age self-help book, and its author, Harriet Lerner is not some quack. Lerner writes beautifully and intuitively and from a position of wise common sense.

For me as a woman, I struggle with recognising that what I am feeling is anger, being responsible for my own emotions and not anybody else's, not blaming others when I disagree with them, and appropriately dealing with other people's anger towards me.

I might struggle with these issues for a long time, but at least now I have read this book I feel clearer in my mind about how I would like to interact with people and how I would like to respond when faced with their hostility or indignant disapproval of the choices I have made.

Sending a link to a book or telling someone about it just isn't the same as thrusting a well-thumbed book in their hands and saying Please read this book! If I owned a copy of this book I would lend it to every woman I know, but as I don't, the Dewey Decimal number is: 155.633 LER.

Introducing

In Melbourne the other night, my grandfather went to the ballet with one of his sisters. It made me feel uncomfortable to imagine that strangers might think they were husband and wife. The next day I heard that a woman had said to my great aunt how lovely it was for my grandfather that he was dating already, so soon after my grandmother passed away.

I would be shocked if my grandfather did meet somebody else so soon, but if he did, I would of course be happy for his happiness.

I am happy for our happiness today, though we are all still rather hesitant and detached. We need eggs and it makes no sense to buy them, so we went out to a guy named Neil's place and picked out three new hens. Z's is the small black 12-week old Australorp and mine and PJ's are the 16-week old Light Sussexes. As yet unnamed. As yet unknown to us. 

In an attempt to recognise our chickens' place in the local ecosystem, tonight we read to Z the first half of Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox.

Because I Said So

As part of my research on stepmothering, I put the prefix step – stepmother, stepfamily, stepchild – into our library's online database and borrowed or reserved every title that I found.

I have just finished reading Because I Said So: 33 mothers write about children, sex, men, aging, faith, race and themselves.

Although not just about stepmothering, I decided to borrow it anyway in hope that there would be one personal essay by a mother with inherited kids. And there was – there was one, the sole reason this book came up in the database search.

According to www.stepfamily.org, over 50% of US families are remarried or re-coupled and 1300 new stepfamilies are formed every day. Considering the statistics, I was very surprised there was only 1 out of 33 essays written from the perspective of a stepparent.

Despite this prejudice or oversight or bias or whatever you'd like to call it, I really enjoyed this collection and would happily recommend it to anyone looking for a book that sticks its hands into the guts of life in the hope it will come out bloody. Some of the writers put a glove on first, some describe their hands, their chipped or manicured nails, their calloused fingers, their moisturised cuticles. Some mothers thrust their mitts right in, while one achingly describes her stump. Some of the mothers are solo, some are partnered, some are young, some old, some with babies, some with children older than me. Some write beautifully, others barely limp along. 

Although some of the pieces were more sentimental than others, and some engrossed me while others brought on the yawns, they all felt honest as each woman described the complexity, beauty, darkness, powerlessness and utter amazement of the daily expedition she pioneers.

Meg Meg, Meg Meg

This morning in an email from my mum about my writing she wrote:

You owe it to yourself and to others not to be swayed from your unique path by anyone else's views. It's your Megness that we hunger for from you, not anyone else's world view, however worthy.

When I was 24 I bought a one way ticket to South East Asia. I shaved my head and spent the next few years wandering and undoing and unlearning, and figuring out for myself what is important.

Now I have a family and a mortgage and I can't just up and leave on noisy days when I need to listen to the quiet.

Years ago my folks brought this stethoscope back for me from an overseas trip. Each time my sister K has been pregnant, I have heard my nieces growing under her skin. Sometimes after a big meal I like to lie on the couch and listen to my stomach play its gurgling overture. And on days like today I like to put it on my heart to hear the present tense sound out my name. 

The Opposite of Hope

Last night PJ and I went to Z's end of year school concert even though Z had a fever and stayed home with his mum. I'm so glad we decided to go anyway as it was a great night: a colour-filled, hodge-podge programme followed by supper made by the parents.

Last year when we were considering what kind of school to send Z to, this is exactly the kind of school we hoped for. Sitting in the hall last night I was very aware of how, as parents, we have such high hopes for our kids. I was also very conscious of my usage of the word hope and how many times it was spoken or sung during the night.

I hope you enjoy tonight's performance. I hope you have a great Xmas. I hope my muffins turned out OK.

I like PJ's definition of hope. That to say I hope is to negate accountability and presume that things will change by external means.

When we say I hope, we are really saying that we are powerless, that we have already given up. Hoping that things turn out a certain way is like believing in God or like being superstitious. It is rejecting responsibility. It is a passive aspiration.

And of course I don't feel passively about Z or about any of the other kids at his school or about any of the other things in my life that I feel hopeful for.

In Eastern philosophy they say embrace hopelessness; that we need to smell the shit, know the shit, and stop deluding ourselves.

Am I deluding myself? Am I ready to live without hope? Is the opposite of hope really despair?

With Decorum

For my birthday I asked my sisters for a totem tennis. It sits in our garden and gets a beating when Z has a friend over or when I am feeling angry. 

Sometimes I feel very very angry. Are you surprised? Why is it that anger is not something we talk about easily? And why is that I don't know many people who are very good at being angry? (Does that say more about the people I hang out with or more about people in general?)

While we were in Newcastle, we went to hear a panel on which there was a woman whose paper absolutely and utterly infuriated me. Still when I think about it now, I feel my cheeks darken. And during question time I told her, then challenged her with a question she answered with indifference.

Afterwards I felt terrible. Even though I had acted according to my own integrity, I felt as though my anger was not in the spirit of the day. And then I was angry at myself for not knowing how to be angry.

PJ is the first boyfriend I have had where I have not felt as though a squabble will culminate in a break up. And as a result, I feel more competent with my anger. But fighting with a sibling or a lover is easier than expressing anger towards a stranger with decorum.

Two Ducks

Remember this album from 1998 - Fatboy Slim's You've Come a Long Way, Baby? The cheeseburger eater with a cigarette in his hand, his watchband tight around his wrist. The stretch of highway beneath him. The traffic lights to one side. 

Aah, the glory of the civilised. Look how far we've come indeed.

It was this cover that came to mind this morning as I walked past a creek with two ducks swimming in it. They paid me no mind as I stopped to admire them quietly going about their breakfast forage. 

All of a sudden I found myself crying, begging forgiveness of these two creatures for what we have done to the Earth, for how far we have strayed from what's most vital. I am not an animist or a pantheist, I am just acutely aware of how entangled we have become inside our civilised praxis: like a duck with its neck caught in a plastic bag.