Home again

‘Oh, three weeks,’ I say breezily when people ask me how long I’ll be away.

‘Three weeks?’ they ask. And then: ‘are you taking your children?’

I shake my head, because it softens the No, which, as you can see, is a much harsher word if you say it with a capital N.

It went like this: meeting in Perth for three days; home for one night, then on a plane to Tasmania where I stayed here as part of this programme; then on a plane (or, as it happens two planes, one of which was terribly, terribly small and a little bit chilly) to Canberra to go in this comedy competition; and then, early the following morning, I got on a bus to drive across the Hay Plain and ended up back in Adelaide.

As my children themselves would say ‘that’s not really for children’.

When I’m away from my children I do feel a kind of disjointedness, a vague restlessness, a need to keep moving forwards to the time when I will see them again. I miss them. I ring them every day and wallow in their voices, long for a cuddle with them, look at their photos for hours at a time. But I also observe of myself, a certain distance from the missing-ness. I’m not sure how to articulate this, and I’ve been trying to put it into words all day. I’m not going to judge how much I love them by how much I miss them. Nor am I going to make any judgement about myself as a mother in relation to others on the basis of how much I miss my children when I’m away, because…well, because it’s pointless and doesn’t help me to answer the questions I’m asking of myself. After a few basics have been covered, there are so many differences in being a mother that you just can’t afford to judge yourself in relation to others. Like the sign on the back of my grandmother’s toilet door said in some kind of rhyming prose ‘there will always be someone better than you and always someone worse’ (there was also a poem about bowls which ended ‘what he could do with kitty, I could do with jack’ and so I think from that you can guess quite a bit about the rest of the house).

So the best I can come up with is the rather obvious observation that we all miss our children in different ways, because so many people, when I tell them I’m about to go away say ‘I could never do that’. This means a whole lot of things I know, including ‘I would miss them too much’ as well as ‘there isn’t anyone else who could look after them for all that time’ as well as ‘that really sounds like a shit way to spend a few weeks why on earth would you take three precious weeks of your life and flush them down the great toilet bowl of the past in such a fashion’.

I can make any number of sensible justifications for trips away. For example: you try starting a new novel when your study has two doors which make a perfect circuit for little boys to run around. Or this one: it’s my trade-off instead of going out to work two or three days a week (two days a week for one year being the equivalent of a few weeks away). But obviously I don’t really need to make the justifications to myself or I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t go away. I mean, I applied for the residency. I accepted it with much excitement. I quarantined the time and protected it ferociously as I thought over and over to myself during the last six months ‘it’s all right, your quiet time is coming, July will be here soon’.

Three weeks was a long time. The longest I’ve been away. And for the first time, I did cry at the airport (in between Perth and Hobart). But it’s been a bit of an emotional year, so I’m not convinced that was all about missing my boys.

In Hobart, I lived by myself. Like, I was the only person in the cottage. The bedrooms, loungeroom, kitchen, bathroom were all for me. Just me. It was pretty strange at first. I met the mister when I was eighteen and we moved in together when I was twenty two, so you can see that I’ve not lived by myself very much at all. Also, there was no television and no internet (I’m thinking of making a t-shirt). And, like I said, it’s been a bit of an emotional time around here. I’m in control of the shadows, but I have to work at it. So I was very glad for the mister’s company when he came to visit for a few nights on his way home from a meeting in Melbourne. And there were some very special uni friends who took good care of me. But mostly, I would say that I liked being by myself.

I’ve always been happy enough with my own company. It comes with the territory of being a bit of a book nerd I guess. I like parties, but I like being by myself too. I like it a lot.

It wasn’t really like living by myself, of course, because it wasn’t real life. What I liked most was that I didn’t have to make any decisions for anyone else. I didn’t have to think about what people were going to wear or to eat. I barely had to make any decisions for myself. It wasn’t my house, so I didn’t have any cluttered cupboards to niggle at me. I had so few clothes that the washing was a simple matter of a load every few days. I had no garden of rampant soursobs to make me think ‘I really must get on to that’.

All there was to do was think and write and delete and think and write some more.

That’s not real life, but it was a lovely, lovely interlude.

The solitude. I liked the solitude.

I was happy to be home. My youngest boy said ‘I’m so excited I’m going to go upside down’ and then did a handstand on the grubby lounge, and it made me laugh and it still makes me smile. It’s been a gorgeous weekend of boys cuddling my legs for no reason at all. It’s good. It’s good to be home.

But being back amongst it all, amongst the races, the jumps and the screams, it makes me know that I really did enjoy the last few weeks. And if I can, I’ll do it again.

It’s probably because I had caesareans.

PS I will write about the guilt another day, because I find that a most fascinating thing.

Normal blogging will shortly resume, but in the meantime…

on gingerbread my little boy says: ‘I like the bread, but not the ginger’

and on peppermint: ‘I like the mint, but not the pepper’

ps I am shamelessly fishing for the punchline to a joke which I know is there, but just won’t be written by my brain…so be warned: any comments on this thread – especially the witty ones which give me a punchline to the above half a joke – may be incorporated into my next routine (unless of course you don’t want it to be – I’m shameless, but I’m not completely without morals).

I think I’ll have a glass of (very good) wine

Knowing the fragility of it all can wake you at 3 in the morning and leave you shivering for hours.

But equally, it can have you eating your tea, just your Dad and you, and noticing that when he speaks he holds his right arm across his stomach while you hold your left. And the next meal you share with someone is lunch across the table from your littlest boy, and isn’t it something, the way he speaks and the curl of his hair and the way he holds his fork, and for the whole of his sausage roll and all of your lentil pie, you really don’t care whether you’ll never have a career.

That’s what I was thinking at lunchtime today.

And then I had this afternoon and it brought amazing news.

And such are the extremes of the highs and lows in my life right now, I can’t tell whether the universe is conspiring for or against me and the people I love.

Or maybe luck just isn’t personal. And the deals that you make when you’re shivering are just deals that you make with yourself.

Not what I would have hoped

Tonight, I went on stage and did my set (that, I have learnt, is the way to describe the string of jokes you put together on any given night) and I DIED. That, I have long known, is the word we use to describe the night you go on stage and no one laughs. I have not, until now, known exactly what it meant in a personal sense. But it means exactly what it says. DIED.

This was not just some mild oh that didn’t go too well, did it and not even a slightly less mild shit, that went bad, didn’t it. No, this was a full on death. Like…well, I will leave it to your imagination. Only you can’t imagine how bad it was.

Now, I have many ideas about what might have gone wrong. Took the wrong lipstick for starters. But I dunno, it was so bad, I don’t think it’s worth dwelling on it for too long, because I don’t know that there’s much I can learn from it. The only thing I can think there is to learn is that even when you die you are still alive to tell the tale.

The pity of it is, is that because of a few other things going on right now, I’m not going back on stage for another month at which point I am in quite an important gig. It does not bode well, does it?

In other news, my new wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills arrived, and I have started what is proving to be a very beautiful jumper which begins with a large amount of moss rib, a truly beautiful stich. I’m sure that’s not how most comedians console themselves.

And in other, other news, the Tooth Fairy did come. She left a note which ended ‘PS Your house is very messy. I hope that you will help your Mum and Dad to clean it up.’ Never miss an opportunity.

PS Thanks for your comments on the last post, which I will digest and answer tomorrow.

Should I blog?

I ask this very specifically, for and about people like me who want to be ‘writers’. I apologise in advance for the earnestness of what is to follow, but I’m preparing a couple of workshops that I’m giving over the next couple of months and as I’ve been trying to articulate how I see blogging as a form of writing, and its potential (or otherwise) for ‘new’ writers, I couldn’t think of any other way to think it through than to write myself a blog post (so I guess the simple answer is ‘yes’).

In asking this question I’m not saying that my blog and my blogging habit all stem from ‘wanting to be a writer’. My blog and my blogging habit are about…well, you’ve got a blog, you’ve read my blog…you know all the things that it’s about. And this question can be easily applied to the wider set of questions, ‘should I blog instead of…’, and I’m sure you have your own range of neglected options to insert here – knitting, playing with children, getting together with friends and so on.

I’m not going to define exactly who I mean by ‘writers’ or ‘want to be’. You can decide for yourself whether or not it applies to you, but I do think that the discussion is slightly different for ‘new’ and ‘established’ writers (as discussed in posts such as this and this at Sarsaparilla).

So, having apologised for this post, my blog, my writing and myself; having determined that we are simply addressing one very small part of blogging; having broken a most important blogging rule (get to the bloody point) I shall ask the question again (because by now you’ve probably forgotten what it even was).

Should people who want to be ‘writers’ blog?

First up, the most obvious argument against blogging: blogging is a distraction from other writing. You already know what I’m going to say, don’t you? So is vacuuming the dust from the corners of the cutlery drawer. As is teaching myself to say the alphabet backwards (actually, I did that the night before my matric biology exam, but I offer it here in case you haven’t thought of it for yourself and need a new procastinatory activity). And reading The Advertiser, weeding the grevilleas, watching Grey’s Anatomy. The list goes on. It’s a spurious argument that one about distraction (do you know, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever used the word ‘spurious’ in a written sentence), presupposing too many things: that every moment I have spent blogging might have been directly applied to some other project; that I haven’t also been writing other things; that other writing projects are all more worthy than this; and that blogging is only about writing.

Perhaps now is a useful time to recall the wise words of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union: abstinence from all things bad, moderation in all things good.

There is a danger that blogging will swallow your best ideas. That once blogged, they can not be used in some other form. The scrape of the spoon on the bottom of the saucepan that led to this post isn’t available to me any more, for example. But that doesn’t mean I’ve necessarily lost anything. I love that piece of writing. It works perfectly as a blog post and wouldn’t work so well anywhere else.

I’ve become less worried about it too since I began performing standup. In standup – though I’m a beginner there too, so speak only from a beginner’s perspective – it seems okay to repeat yourself on your way to getting it right. You should polish your pieces until you think they will work, but very often you (I) don’t know whether they will work until they’ve been said outside the safety of your empty kitchen.

Blogging has sharpened my writing. I know, when I blog, that someone will read what I have written, and quite possibly that someone will read it only a few minutes after I’ve finished writing it (if I got hit by a bus, would I be happy for that to stand as my Last Post). I’ve been able to experiment with voice and with point of view and blogging has heightened my awareness of the every day. I might think, for example, of the colour lipstick I wear and the sentence I could use to describe that on a blog.

I could have learnt that from my other paper journal, perhaps, but a blog does not work in the same way that a private journal does. Because a blog is not private. Different bloggers deal with this differently, but deal with it they must. Anger, for example. I would never directly blog about my anger with important people in my life. Too hard to mop up. But I do blog about it every now and then. Like here. I can’t tell you how pissed off I was that day. And I didn’t need to once I’d written it down that way. And it gave me an idea, and there’s a larger piece of writing that’s grown from that, and I’ll be able to use it one day (well, I hope so, you know, maybe).

Not only does a blog bring you readers, it brings readers you get to know a bit about. Because blogging can’t be only about the writing. It’s about reading too. Reading a lot. And somehow, I think that can’t help but give you an insight into your own writing that isn’t available in any other form. You get told endlessly at workshops ‘write for yourself first’, but blogging teaches you – quickly – what that means. Not just how to do it, but the implications too.

On the relationship between your blog and your readers, there’s something to be said about learning how to ‘write what you know’ – direct experience – and transposing it to mean more than what just happened or what you immediately felt. But at the same time, you must be honest, because your blog readers (generally) expect that what you write in this form is true. I haven’t quite worked out how to articulate this point yet, but I know it is an important one. Do let me know if you think you know what I’m trying to say.

There’s a lot that blogging can teach you about other forms of writing. I imagine you could learn a lot about writing an open-ended narrative like a soap for example. And there are endless types of online writing which would blogging could introduce you to. I’m not sure about a novel though (and there’s an excellent discussion about that here). Though possibly if you were very good at forward planning and had a very particular kind of structural control. Maybe then.

That’s enough for now, isn’t it? I’ve spent far too long on this, haven’t I? Thanks for reading this far if indeed you have. Back to the shoes and coffee cups tomorrow. Promise.

Milestones

Oh. Eldest boy’s tooth has finally fallen out. Missing in action. The banana seems the most likely thing.

He sat on my lap for a while, and my arms still reach right around him, even if his legs have got a bit long. He had to get off so we wouldn’t be late for school.

I have warned him over the past few weeks: the tooth fairy is the least reliable of them all. And he said: what does reliable mean?

three o’clock tea


three o’clock teaOriginally uploaded by adelaide writer

This is the cup from which I drink my three o’clock tea. Obviously, I usually have that sometime around two, because I have to collect children from school. But you know the cup of tea I mean.

Generally, the tea I have at three is green. If I’m having peppermint, I use a different cup. I never drink coffee from it. In summer, I sometimes use it to drink chilled water from. Which is interesting, because of all the cups I use, this is one of the easiest to warm. I need only the smallest amount of water in the bottom to be swirled as it is tipped into the sink, and it is warm.

My mother gave me this cup when I was around 17 because some days just are she said. Here is the point where I would tell you that this cup symbolises, therefore, some moment of connectedness between the two of us and that when I drink from it I think of her and the way she always understood me and always knew how to say the right thing.

In truth, I have never known what she meant as she pulled the cup from the supermarket bag and gave it to me. Somewhat awkwardly, it must be said.

I don’t even know whether she was referring to my life or to her own.

And it’s only just now, as I’ve been writing this post that it has even occurred to me that she might have been talking about herself and not about me. Ha! And they say blogging is narcissistic.

We were neither of us Dog Persons so it can’t be that.

I had to leave for the school pick up before I could quite finish this post, and as I was walking in and pondering this cup, I started to wonder: do you think that if your mother dies when you are young(ish) you become more like her than you might otherwise have done?

This was just gonna be a blog entry about a cup of tea. Honestly.