High School

It takes the time it takes:
a slow growth that appears
suddenly. She is more than the sum
of her days minutes and hours,
the trickle of weeks, the fluttering years,
the incalculable mathematics of her concern
about her hair which flicks up at the ends,
it will never be all right I want to say
but that's my lesson to learn not hers.
Her bag weighs more than a small child

Frederique is offended

I have a job. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and some Fridays I go into the office to work, other days I work from home. The job is working with youth mental health professionals, writing therapy for young people with depression and for carers of young people with depression. It involves lots of research and problem solving, story-telling and buckets of characterisation and back story. I am really enjoying collaborating, and, just, working actually. Meetings. Lunch. You know. With other people. And a regular paycheck. And shiny, shiny superannuation.
Today the car was in for a service. The girls were booked into before and after care, Avery had a day at creche. Martin and I travelled most of the way in together. I caught a bus and a train the rest of the way, riding through familiar inner suburban territories. Brunswick. I always wanted to live in Brunswick. Yeah, we are not affording that, even with two incomes. Even with shiny super. And the girls think the city is polluted.
I do the reverse trip back to Martin's work in Thornbury.
We pick up Avery first. We drop into the supermarket to get emergency supplies: peanut butter, cottage cheese. As Martin performs this errand, Avery and I sit in the car. Someone honks their horn. Avery says 'Is that. An angry man?' he speaks in very distinct clauses though sometimes his words run together.
Next stop is the after school care.
Freddy slides into the backseat, while Una juggles two large pieces of three dimensional craft, her bag and a notice.
'Hi, Freddy,' I say. 'How are you?'
'Sitting.'
'How's that working out for you.'
'Fine!' She rearranges herself. 'Guess what I did on the computer today?'
'What?'
 'I found your blog. And I read it.'
'Did you?'
'Yes. AND you said your children are ghosts!'
I laugh.
'Did you say that?' Una asks. 'Your children are ghosts.'
'Oh, probably. That sounds like something I would say.'
'That's offensive!' Fred says.
Una says, 'That's racist.'
Fred tells us she's been feeling a little bit sick. Her knee hurts where she fell on it on the weekend and she has a flashing pain in her foot. 'It's FLASHING,' she says. 'It comes and then it goes. It comes and then it goes. And I've got bike ed tomorrow.'
When we get home, Martin origamis various seats in his little car to get the bike in. We mentally engineer a convoluted drop off arrangement for tomorrow, because only one child can fit in the car with the bike.
As soon as we come inside I put water on for the rice. We have stir-fried beef and salad. Fred says she is still feeling sick, but she eats all her own dinner and Avery's meat. Avery eats half his rice and the rest is distributed around the floor, grains adhering themselves to the towel Martin has put under his seat. He also eats several pieces of tomato, which is his nod to salad.
After dinner, Una sets up her violin practice. I take off Avery's clothes, ready for the bath, and Fred finds a spot. She calls me over. Lots of spots, all over her tummy, her neck. She turns around, on her back they are already beginning to blister. 'Oh,' I say. 'Oh dear.'
She begins to wail. 'Not again.'
Third time. Chicken pox.
She says, 'But I've had it three times in a row.'
By in a row she means once when she was 2, again (suspected but never confirmed) when she was 5 or 6. But there is no doubt that this, at 10, is the pox.
All night, in the bath, getting dry, getting dressed and reading, every now and then she will begin to wail again and she cries out in sheer disgust 'Spots!'
Avery is intrigued. He and Una have both had the immunisation, but (because Fred has had it apparently twice) we haven't ever had Fred vaccinated - it wasn't on the schedule when she was a toddler.
So this is it then. Working life. Complicated and sort of...spotty.

The best thing

It's the day after Frederique's 10th birthday.

I have been playing the game. You know the game? This one:

This time ten years ago, it was an uncharacteristically warm late April, the sun was like syrup thick in the trees, and the air smelt of the changing colour of the European trees in Fitzroy gardens, across the road from the hospital.

This time ten years ago I was still in hospital, caught in suspended animation between before and after in the perpetual muted twilight of the birth centre.

This time ten years ago, I looked down at this complicated thing, bundle of limbs, this puzzle. Did I know her then? Did I see the first glimpses of who she is becoming? The expanding infinity of her?

Or: I did not know her then, what makes me think I know her now?

Or: do I know her the best I am ever going to know her? The pure dark whorl of her id inflating to block out all other sources of light and information. She hasn't yet learned the complete art of hiding the wildness of desire. She is hungry, but for what? She feels, all jangling nerve ends, all raw appetite. As time passes and she slowly perfects the skills of concealing, delaying, fabricating, will I know her less and less. As she solves the riddle of herself, will she become more and more a puzzle to me?

Last night she gave me a hug before going to bed. 'What's the best thing about being alive so far?' I asked her. She thought for the briefest moment and in that moment the tangled mess of her seemed just below the surface and I thought it would be a question she wouldn't be able to answer. But she surprised me.

'Books,' she said. 'I couldn't live without books.'

It’s funny about the distance

You start running together

because you’re sad

and she hasn’t been sleeping.

She says It’s funny about the distance

And, Christmas is just another day.

She says, I’m also running to lose weight

and you say oh no don’t even say that

and you say about the girls

who waste themselves to bone

and she says she knows a way

to tell what colour your hair is

by the shape of the back of your head

she cups your skull and frowns,

announces that your hair is brown,

which it is.

Changing Places

Our oldest daughter started school at The Local three years ago. It was a small school when we chose it. We shopped around because that’s what parents seem to these days, looking at three schools in the area. We were impressed by the big school 10 minutes drive away, charmed by the little (but not as little as The Local) school adjacent to Fred's kinder about 8 minutes drive away with its mix of new and old buildings. Both these schools are serviced by a bus that passes on the main road, five minutes walk from our house. But Fred loved The Local the best, and I favoured the idea of a local school, one we could walk to. When we chose it we thought there were about 85 kids, by the time Fred started there were 65.

Her class size, a combined prep/1/2, was fairly normal, about 25 kids total, with two teachers in the expansive double unit. It seemed in many ways an ideal set up. The extremely experienced prep teacher was kind and gentle. I have never in three years heard her raise her voice. The other teacher in the room was also experienced, but with a different style. They seemed to complement each other.

By the time Fred was in grade two, the numbers of the whole school had dropped dramatically to 37. Her grade of ten was down to eight. My other daughter, Una, started the school as one of only two preps, for the second year in a row. The art teacher had left, as had several other staff members. The school was down to three permanent teachers (all very senior), and there was no longer two teachers in Fred's classroom - it was her third year in a row with the same teacher.

The Local School offers many opportunities to students, inter-school sport where everyone gets a turn from grade 3 to 6 (sometimes combining with other smaller schools to make a team), a lovely music program, PE, and a larger than usual number of whole school excursions and incursions. There are discos and bush dances and this year the parents participated in a progressive dinner party. The whole school is performing The Wizard of Oz tomorrow night. The kids care for a small but productive vegetable garden. The students host assembly each week. The OSHC program is staffed by a dynamic and creative young woman.

In the winter terms the kids have Cubbyland: using found objects they make little houses in a gully of trees. They form tribes and beg, borrow and steal supplies (one year a talented boy sang for sticks). The cubbies are dismantled every Friday, new tribes form on Monday. The politics of Cubbyland are intricate and impossible for an outsider to really fathom, especially a grown up. The self governing works pretty well. It's kind of like Lord of the Flies, but, as the Principal once said to me, 'without the Piggy killing.'

We’ve had problems at the school, some of them resolved easily, even elegantly, and some not to our satisfaction. I am sure this is true of every parent at every school, but it can be hard not to take it personally in a school of 37 kids. Still, mostly our kids' experiences at The Local have been great. Fred particularly is devoted to the school.

I have to admit, it’s been a little demoralising to be part of a school that feels like it’s dying, that doesn’t have the support of the local community – so many parents travel out of the area for school. It’s a vicious cycle. The smaller the school gets, the less people are inclined to choose it for their own children. 'Our school is not very popular,' Una said to me out of the blue in the car a few weeks ago as we drove up the hill out of Warrandyte where - a long time ago, a whole year - she'd gone to creche. 'No,' I admitted. 'It's not very popular.' She sighed. 'I'd like to go to a popular school.' Una and I have had a conversation along these lines every few weeks since before she even started at The Local. In fact over three years ago, when I was looking at schools for Fred Una came with me. She walked out of the Big School and said, 'This is my school.'

When Avery was born last year a friend commented (on this blog I think) 'You’ll populate that tiny school yet.' Unfortunately she was wrong. In the last two weeks we have made the decision to move our children to the Big School ten minutes away.

So we are saying goodbye to our tiny school and it's a sad goodbye. I love the school. I love the staff: I respect them as educators; I like them as people. I feel invested in the other children and the idea that I won’t be there in 2015 to see Fred’s class graduate is a sad thought. Although I know my children are ready for the challenges of the big school, for a busy and vibrant program, and for a larger circle of friends, I do feel that I am taking something precious away from them as well.

Mostly though I am mourning for myself. I love the walk to school in the mornings. I like feeling a part of the place, the relationship I have with the teachers, the easy, casual vibe with the other parents. I’ll miss arriving early to pick up the kids and wandering the corridor with Avery. I’ll miss the relaxed school uniform, that I can send them in streetwear if we're behind in our laundry. I'll miss the way I can hold the whole school in my head, I'll miss knowing who they play with. I'll miss miniature army, and the way all the older kids are ascribed family titles "mother", "uncle", "aunt".

We told them on Saturday, after their Friday night school disco. We decided to tell them separately, so we took them out "Christmas shopping". I took Una. I pulled over by the side of the road, opposite the Big School. I told her to climb over into the front seat, I had something to tell her. She looked at me very seriously. I explained she was going to change schools, that she was going to go to a more popular school. Her face lit up, her eyes shone. Everything pleased her - the Italian and violin lessons

Martin told Fred. I couldn't, I was worried that if she cried I would cry, and it would send the wrong message. I've been crying a lot about it. For the week after we signed the forms and before we told them I'd been sick with anxiety over it. Every time Fred hugged me or just simply looked happy and at peace I felt like a traitor. And as I thought would happen Fred burst into tears. But almost immediately she was okay. She knew she would miss her school and her friends. Yet the idea of a big bustling population of kids was undeniably exciting, and her outlook now is positive.

The teachers who haven't taught Fred yet are sad to see her go, they've both been looking forward to having her in their classes. 'I just hope,' says the 5/6 teacher, 'that conventional school doesn't take away her spark.' What I don't say, but have discovered, is that there is more pressure to conform at a small school, perhaps not from the institution but certainly from the other kids. I think socially at least Fred will be able to be more herself. To some extent she'll be able to create the community she wants to be a part of, instead of being forced to fit in with the 5 other girls in her class, or risk being an outsider.

So far the other parents have been disappointed but understanding. The sick feeling is slowly subsiding. As my friend Jelly said, coming and going is part of school life, even (perhaps especially) at our small school.

Yesterday the girls did a practice at the Big School. We got there during the lunch hour and the girls went off to explore the playground. I tried to keep both of them in my sights, worried that they wouldn’t know what to do when the bell rang, and got a little panicked as Una chased a boy she knew from Kinder in one direction and Fred wandered off with two preps interrogating her in another direction.

Instead of a bell they played music to signal the return to classes. I found Una staring at three rubbish bins, oblivious to the sudden tide of kids heading back to the school buildings.

'There’s music coming out of that bin,' she told me.

I delivered Una to her teacher, a warm woman who lives out our way and used to be the library teacher – so I think we will like each other. She was expecting Una and greeted her by name. One of Fred’s prep groupies from the playground was in Una’s class and volunteered to take care of her.

I took Fred round to her room a small, slightly pokey portable - so different from the expanse of space at the Local. The kids were lined up outside and Fred recognised a girl from kinder who lives near us, who we see regularly at the library bus. Her new teacher is tall and smily and used to captain the Australian volleyball team. Apparently he asked the class if anyone knew what an acrostic is and Fred-the-poet stuck up her hand and explained it to the class. Her acrostic was:

Funny

Reading

Eating

Doesn’t like eggs.

I love that she chose Funny and Reading to describe herself.

As I write this I hear the Local School bell, signalling recess. I love that sound, it makes me think of my children, I can picture them dropping their pencils, running outside to play.

I know they’re going to be fine. I just hope I can say the same about me.

Why don't grown ups cry?

Recently you said to me "Why don't grown ups cry? Why don't you ever cry?"

Amazed, I said "I cry! You've seen me cry."

You said, "Have I?" And again, incredulous, "Have I?"

I have sat down on the floor beside you and sobbed, from tiredness or grief or anger or hunger or because my blood burned with sugar. I have cried from hopelessness, because I am terrible at motherhood, because loving you hurts. Because I used to be one thing, and then when you were born there was a tearing, a splitting, like antarctica calving an iceberg, you split from the continent and I lost a part of myself and I must bear that loss over and over. You have borne witness to two pregnancies, and overfilled I leaked tears. You have seen me cry in public, in cities all over the world, in Paris by the Seine, in London as we crossed the street, in Helsinki, in Hong Kong. I have cried because you have used up all my oxygen with your hunger and your need and your love. I have cried because you would not sleep, would not eat, would not leave, would not stay. I have cried reading you sad stories and watching movies with you on my lap. From love and from pride, from exhaustion of feelings, I have cried.

It is a strange trick of your memory that you have forgotten all this. For the first time I wonder if you have repressed these memories, if you have actively chosen to forget. Or perhaps the mind cannot hold what it cannot process, the impossibility of a mother who melts like snow. Perhaps this is why grown ups don't cry.

Things we talk about before school

I get up. Fred and Una are sitting on the couch side by side. Fred is holding a giant rubber spider up to her face.
Fred: I'm hiding.
Una: From you.
Fred: Well not from you. From a person called You.

***
After watching Justin Bieber (Una is an out and proud Belieber and I suspect Fred is a closet one) on the Tubes I said, "Do you want to see someone I used to love when I was a teenager?"
They were both extremely keen on the idea. So I searched for the film clip of Never Tear Us Apart, my favourite INXS song. My goodness, what a festival of eighties New-Romantic glam-pop gender-bending aesthetic that is, I had to keep pointing out which one was Michael Hutchence and which the random wafting girl. And of course the whole thing is filmed in Prague. Of course it is. Wikipedia describes the song as "a sensuous ballad, layered with synthesizers and containing dramatic pauses before the instrumental breaks. Kirk Pengilly lends a cathartic saxophone solo near the end." You gotta love a cathartic saxophone solo. You just don't get that anymore. Music today. Etcetera. Everytime Frederique sings "I'm wearing all my favourite brands brands brands" a little part of me dies inside.
As I watch the clip I think how young Michael Hutchence looks, how soft in his jawline, how clean and safe.
"Did you really like him?" Una asks.
"Yes," I say.
"Really?"
"I like him," Frederique reassures me.
"Do you know the really sad thing?" I say. "He died."
"Was he old?"
"Not very old. About my age I think."
"How did he die?"
"Well, he was all alone in a hotel room. No one's really sure if it was an accident or if he did it on purpose."
"Maybe he was murdered," Fred suggests.
"Mm," I make a non-committal noise.
"Maybe," says Una with relish, "it's one of the world's last mysteries."
"Like Tutenkahmen,' says Fred.
"Yeah," says Una. "No one knows how he died."
But later Una comes up to me and says "I think he must have done it on purpose. If he was all alone in the hotel."

Faultlines

A few weeks ago Fred and Una and I got separated on the way to school. At the corner of our street and the street that takes us down to the main road Fred ran ahead. It is not uncommon for Fred to run ahead and walk by herself and in fact last year she chose to walk to school alone a few times a week rather than drive Una to kinder, with never an incident. So at the corner I called out "We're going to go the back way" and Una and I set off on the hilly scenic walk, down the dirt road, under gum trees where parrots flit from tree to tree and occasionally you come across a quietly grazing kangaroo. It doesn't take much longer than the main road walk but for some reason Fred doesn't like to do it. Fred wasn't *that* far ahead and I assumed she had heard me, but I also assumed even if she hadn't she would keep running all the way to school and beat us there, as she often does.
Anyway, Una and I wended our way to the crossing.
"No Freddy today?" the guard asked us.
"But she's already crossed hasn't she?"
The crossing guard frowned, trying to remember. "I don't think so." But she wasn't sure, though there's probably only half a dozen or so families who regularly walk to school (there's only about 30 familes at the school, and many of them are too far away from 'town' to walk). Anyway, Una and I crossed over and looked around the playground. No sign of Fred. I wanted to leave Una with the pram so I could run back and look for her, but Una, also worried, wanted to come too. I was making a plan (leaving Avery and Una with Jools in the office) when Fred came hurtling into the school yard, tears streaming down her face, followed by one of the other Grade Two mums.
She was crying and shaking, still frightened, in shock I think. Seeing me safe and well, with Una and Avery, also made her a little angry I think. I took them into the classroom and then Fred and I went to the staffroom where I held her while she calmed down. It took her a long time to stop shaking.
"I called out," I told her. "Didn't you hear me?"
It turns out Fred hadn't heard me. She had run ahead to talk to Jake the dog. When I didn't follow she got increasingly worried. She walked back up the road, realised I'd "disappeared" and began howling.
"What did you think had happened to me?" I asked later, guilty, exasperated.
She couldn't tell me.
Anyway until Saturday I thought that the next thing that had happened was the other mum had picked her up, driven back to our place to see if we'd gone home for something and then taken Fred to school. But on Saturday night we had a progressive dinner in the area, moving from house to house to eat the various courses. It's not something I've ever done before, but Martin used to do it as a kid. It was a great night, a fundraiser for the school, and the cooking was exceptional - a few foodies among us I think (highlight was the slow roasted tomato tart with pistachio crust). It was an utterly charming occasion, like everything out this way, a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll. Anyway, during the soup course (one long table in the big kids wing at the school) I was sitting opposite Jake's owner and she told me of her encounter with Fred.
"Jake was barking this really weird bark," she said. "I knew something was wrong. It was very strange."

She came outside and found poor howling Fred.
"My mum's disappeared," Fred told her. Fred has dramatic tendencies and has a flair for following things beyond their logical conclusion. "She was right behind me and now she's gone."
This was when the grade two mum saw them talking and stopped to pick Fred up.
I apologised to Fred a few times that morning before I left her (I stayed in class for an hour to do some reading activities with the prep/one/twos) and again when I picked her up.
"Don't worry about it Mum," Fred said, but she looked hollow and haunted every time I brought it up.
We've been playing scrabble together on the iPhone and her iPod Touch.Okay, so it's not like in my childhood where a game of scrabble was a companionable hour or so with my Nanna, but I really enjoy playing with her. One of the best aspects is the chat feature. It's like a meta-narrative:

"Mum, I don't want to talk about it." That took the wind out of me. I wanted to talk to her. I like to think I am a persuasive talker, and I wanted to convince her of my version: she was never really in danger for a start. It was a misunderstanding.
"Are you angry with me?" I asked her that evening.
"A little bit," she admitted. Then, not looking at me. "I don't want to talk about it."
We've mentioned it since then, in passing mostly. This morning I told her what Jake's owner said about his unusual bark, she liked the idea that Jake had helped her.
You know it's not a big drama. If it's the worst thing that happens to Fred this year then she's a pretty lucky girl. And look at what a great community we have, how quickly she was cared for by other mums, and by the neighbour's dog.
It's funny these hairline cracks. So faint they hardly show. But it's a faultline (a fault line) between mother and daughter. It's part of the continental shift, the stretch and pull and collision and rupturing of our two selves. How can such a thing like maternal separation not leave scars? It's almost like this had to happen. Oh not exactly this, not necessarily this sequence of events. But somehow: the acting out of the conflict within, the dramatisation of the internal drama of the self in which the archetypes, mother and child, each play out their role, like puppets on a string. She had to know that one day she could turn around and I will be gone.

Found objects

Una: The government writes all the songs. The government wrote the songs when he was a kid.

Fred: Mum, I think you're the most normal thing in my crazy mixed up world.

Una's List

Watch television
Eat a lolly
Draw a scary picture

Get the washing in
Do the dishes

Do a painting


Lie in the hammock

Eat biscuits

Play on the computer



Notice play on the computer is hastily added in in another colour. This was a non-sanctioned activity and was added in about halfway through the day, but she was very insistent that, as it was on the list, it HAD to be ticked off. She is sneaky my Una.
Freddy had a list too, and the day passed by beautifully, one of those sunny, slow-time Sundays, perfect for gardening and reading a little in the sun, and a walk down to the roadside plant stall looking for inspiration and a play with the next-doors and a bit of housework too.
The sort of days you might want to capture in a blog post, because they are full of the textures of autumn, and the pleasure of domestic life and the bliss of family living, and yet in themselves are so unremarkable that they could easily slide away, forgotten on other, busier, angrier days.

Ideas from the wind

Una (dreamily): Imagine if we had a big tin of silver polish.
Martin: Why do you want silver polish?
Una: Then if I had a friend around to play and she had silver shoes I could say (casually), ‘Your shoes are very dirty. Would you like a polish? We have some silver polish in the barn.’ Imagine.
~Una

This morning Fred said, 'Can I use this pen?' She had been up for over an hour, I had only just risen. Martin and Una had driven off to creche, and were having the above conversation.

'Sure,' I said and probably something grumpy about not losing it.

And she went outside to write poetry, and get ideas from the wind.

Incidentally, Fred has always loved the wind. When I used to take her outside at a few months old in the Baby Bjorn she would open her mouth and swallow it and gasp in delight. Wind is her element, and her energy.

Thunderstorm and Flower had a Baby

We have our friend Finlay round to play today. It's been a great day so far - lemonade scones with Nana's homemade raspberry and plum jam, hot chocs and chocolate freckles, and right now F & F are in the bedroom watching Are You Being Served? and eating strawberries and toasted cheese sandwiches, while Una who was beginning to fall apart cruises on Martin's computer with Boowa and Kwala.

Before they were playing a long narrative game outside. From where I was sitting I could hear snatches of them speaking and I wrote down the bits that I could catch. It's a fascinating insight into how kids can comfortably fit different agendas into one game, in how genres can blend, into gender expectations and fears, and into how they build a story together. I was interested in how Una played, a part of the game, but also still 'parallel' playing: she found her way into the story then did her own thing, occasionally reconnecting with Finlay and Fred, and though she was sometimes at cross-purposes, they accommodated her elegantly. The stars represent a break in time where stuff was happening that I couldn't hear.

Fred: lets play mums and babies
Finlay: no! no no no. I'm not the baby.
Una: You're the baby, Fred
Fred: No you should be the baby because you're the youngest
Una: (brews a tantrum)
Fred: (alarmed) Okay, okay! You're the mum
Una: You're the baby, I'm the mum and Finlay's the dad
Finlay: (considers) As long as I can be the karate dad.
Una and Fred: (shrug) sure
Finlay: And I'm the bad guy (jumps up, runs away making weeooweeoo police car noises, while the girls settle into fairy typical for them mum and baby dialogue)

***
Una: we didn't choose our names and how old we are. I'm thirty.
Finlay: I'm the highest so I'm 30-20
Fred: There's no such thing as 30-20. It only goes up to 39. You can be 35. You're very old.
Finlay: I'm not old. I'm not old. I'm twenty. I'm twenty.
Fred: Okay. What about you can be twenty-one?
Una: I'm twenty-zero.
Fred: Yeah that's twenty. I'm zero and I'm a baby. Let's think of a name. What about Poppy?
Finlay: What about Thunder?
Fred: No I want to be a girl name.
Finlay: What about Rhoda?º
Una: What about Rosetta?
Fred: I'll be Roseanna.
Finlay: I'm going to do my name. I'm going to be called Thunderstorm.
Una: What's my name going to be. My name is...um...hmmm...
Finlay: Thunder?
Una: No.
Finlay: No, my name's thunder.
Una: My name is... Flower.
Finlay: And I said Flower? Flower? I don't want this baby escaped until I get back. If I get dead it doesn't matter. If you see a bird, that will be me.
Una: Okay! (exit Finlay)

***
Finlay: And I disappeared over there and you never saw me again?
Fred: But you come back in the game though.
Finlay: Yeah. And I crasheded
Fred: But you didn't hurt yourself because you were a magic bird.

***
Fred: And I was practicing to walk and to talk.
Una: And you fell over.
Fred: Uh oh. Uh oh. (*Stage Whisper*) You have to say up-a-days, up-a-days.

***
Finlay: And you go back to bed.
Fred: Not always. I have to get up sometimes!
Finlay: But when I get back from battle you go back to your bed.

***
Una: Actually I am the dog.
(the game threatens to fall apart because if Una is the dog and Finlay is going to be at battle there's no one to look after the baby, until I go outside and intervene, reminding them that in Peter Pan the parents go out and leave the dog to look after the children. They look incredulous, but agree, until, 5 seconds later...)
Fred: Actually, I'm the mum.
Finlay: (worries about this slippery switch of identities.)
(Penni produces (newly acquired by Fred with Christmas money) Baby Alive*. The game continues.)

***
Fred: (crossly) You can turn into things but no dying in this game.

***
Finlay: (flies in.) And now I'm a flying dog.
Fred: Turn back into a human right now. I need you to get the baby's bottle.

***
Fred: Hang on, my name is Annie.
Finlay: My name is Thunderbird.
Fred: Excuse me, can you look after the baby?
Finlay: But then I changed. Actually I have to go into battle.
Fred: I can do that.
Finlay: But I was already gone.
(Fred pursues, they do a lap of the house)

***
On their return Fred runs off to battle leaving Finlay with the baby.
Fred: (calling over her shoulder) Look after the baby
Finlay: (genuinely panicked) No. No. I really can't. (runs after Fred). Wait I have to tell you something. There's a GIANT. And you were afraid.
Fred: I'm never afraid.

***
Una crals into my field of view, on the veranda.
Una: Yip yip yip.
She picks up the baby and carries it away, whilst on all fours.
Somewhere I can hear Fred and Finlay negotiating over who is going to look after the baby.

***
Una: And you didn't know I was your dog.
Finlay: And I knew because I could see your tail.
Una: (flaps wings)
Finlay: And I said transform yourself into a human please I need to talk to you and you listened.
Una: But I was a bird without ears so I couldn't hear.

****
Finlay: And you were so amazed because I was doing flips in the air and those spiders could not catch me.

***
Una: And just pretend those spiders came to me and they put a spell on me that was a sleeping spell.
Finlay: Yeah, and I...(wanders off to find Fred)
Una: And Finlay! Finlay! Just pretend you couldn't break the spell.
Finlay: (wanders back)
Una: Finlay, just pretend you couldn't break the spell.
Finlay: Yeah, because you were shielded by that queen.
Una: And just pretend after when I had the sleeping spell I turned into a queen dog
Finlay: And you were still good and I said Dog, I need your help, you are the only one. (suddenly inspired, runs to Fred) Fred, just pretend I had an invisible spell on me and I got through the deflector field.

***
Finlay: When you get back you saw me dead.
Fred: And I used my power on you. SHA!
Finlay: And it didn't work.
Fred: And then
Finlay: And I woke up and it was just a dream.
Fred: and there were baddies attacking me and they took me away but you didn't see me.
Finlay: Because I was too busy looking over there.

***
(at this stage they are in three very different places in our garden (which is nearly an acre so they are all shouting).
Una: FREDDY! FREDDY! (says something Fred and I can't hear, but Finlay hears)
Finlay: No, that was just a big dream!
Una: FREDDY!
Fred: I heard you.
Finlay: UNA SHE HEARD YOU. Just pretend you got broken.
Una: NO, I'M NOT BROKEN
Finlay: I'm talking to Freddy!

***
Una: Fred. Fre-ed. Just pretend you came to me.
Finlay: NO! she's locked up and she's dead now.

FIN
Soon after this they all troop inside for hot cocoa and chocolate freckles.

ºWhere on earth did he get the name Rhoda?
*Thankfully the non-pooing, non-talking, non-blinking variety.

Falling from Grace

In other Christmas news, Fred came up to me the other day when Una was at the other end of the room and hissed 'Just tell me quickly, is Santa real or is it just parents?'
I said 'what do you think?'
She said: 'Santa?' (doubtfully). I raised my eyebrows in a way that I hoped was non-commital.
She said, 'Just tell me.'
We went down to the bedroom. And it emerged, that yes, Santa was parents. And she was cool with that, really. She'd figured as much, probably ages ago.

And then - tragic that I am - I went and looked myself in the bathroom and cried for about 20 minutes. I don't know why it affected me so much. And I'm okay about it now. But it was like, all of a sudden, some of the magic of Christmas, the magic that you wait so long to return after your own fall from grace, so you can experience it through your children, was sucked away again. It was like I fell all over again (though I honestly have no memory of the transition from belief to non-belief). Honesty was always my policy, but also it was convenient for us for Fred to know the truth, that we can't afford big presents this year - we'd said as much only earlier that day, how it would be a relief when it was all out in the open. 'Did I sell out Fred's childhood,' I asked Martin, 'for our convenience?' No, no. Of course we didn't. She asked. She wanted to know the truth*.

Don't tell Una, we said. You mustn't tell Una. And she hasn't.
But she did come home from school and say to me mystified, 'I tried to tell some of the other kids at school and they wouldn't believe me!'
Oh my god. We clutch her and plead - we're doing some serious facetalking now: 'Don't tell ANYONE. It's not for you to tell.'
'But they wouldn't believe me!' And I can tell she's tried - really tried - to convince them. I'm gutted that it's our kid who's the whistle blower. Me! How could this happen?

Strangely enough we still managed to get Fred to sit with Santa.
I wonder if it will be the last time? She was very shy, and obviously felt like a bit of a dill. Not so Una, she told Santa all about the walking talking blinking pony she wants and the doll who can really ride it and really hold on all by itself and say anything Una wants it to say. We didn't get an official shot this year, Martin's card wouldn't scan when it came time to pay. Luckily Martin had got a few snapshots with the phone. And this photo is much more natural than the pose they called for - seriously, let the kids talk to Santa for thirty seconds before getting them to switch on the fake smiles for the camera!

*I am a little ashamed to tell you that a few days later when she asked about the tooth fairy as I was looking at her teeth (quick Mum, come downstairs for a minute), I looked her in the eye and said 'Oh no, the tooth fairy's real.' I just couldn't face that fall too, not before she's even lost a single tooth.

In the face of it - peace

It is strange how normal life proceeds in the face of death. Valued Opinions sends another survey:


Hi Penelope,

We have a new survey available for you to take. If you qualify and complete the survey you will receive $1.50.

Survey topic: Consumer Goods

I want to ring them. I want to say 'Don't you know someone has died? How can I care about consumer goods? What is the point of $1.50, in all this world with all its pain and loss?' I quietly delete the email.

On Friday evening, after a long day holding it together at uni, in the company of people who did not know him and have failed utterly to notice his absence, my children fight at the dinner table. I hurry to assure them my tears aren't because they are fighting. I am crying because we live now in a house of grief, and I don't know how to find the time and space for it, or give them the time and space they need. Our house is small and suddenly feels crowded. Everyone grieves in their own way. We spend a weekend outdoors in the sun. It seems important. Carrying Una back to the car along a bush track, she leans her check against my shoulder and says, 'I'm sad about Papa.' We talk about what we miss most. Fred says his jokes. She is the only one. Miles told terrible jokes. But I will miss the way he told them. Thinking about the glimmer in his eye makes me smile. Fred has inherited Miles's love of jokes.

The phone rings, emails appear, I go to uni, I buy groceries. Life goes on. Things proceed as usual. As I write this post the phone rings again. It's Kate. And she tells me Josie and the Michael Street Kids has been shortlisted for the Children's Peace Literature Award, along with her book Winter of Grace. I am so happy for her. I am happy for us. I am happy for Josie, such a small book out there amongst giants, a quiet book about the power of stories to connect people together and to heal broken hearts. A story about our own personal maps, how we inscribe ourselves on the places we live, and how they inscribe themselves on us. A story about the last days of childhood, on the cusp of the long hot summer that marks the year between primary and secondary school. If this book has put some peace out there, into the world, then my heart is overwhelmed for a moment with joy.

Miss Spelling

My spelling is wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles and the letters get in the wrong places. Winnie the Pooh

I em dansing.

Ponies the past went past we.

Mama Pene Mama Eart Me After Dad


These were all in a notebook Fred writes and draws in sometimes, like a diary but without the usual sense of order a diary suggests - her pages are random, there is no indication of when each was written, though most of them were from the time of our holiday at Easter when we went to Silvers circus. The last one is a song, each syllable is accompanied by a musical note. I stumbled upon it looking for somewhere to scribble notes while she was on my computer.

In the book I found a map she had drawn with the title: I EM HAPPY. It is a map of school and she has labeled certain landmarks: CUBILAND, PLAYGRAND and CURPAK (it took me a while to realise that CURPAK, which points to a ladderish image, means carpark and while it strikes me as odd, as a grown up, that the carpark should be one of her major landmarks, I myself have a wash of odd and ambiguous nostalgia about the row of carparking spaces out the front of Mt Nelson Primary School, which is odd because I have few memories of being driven to or from school). It's testimony to how much she likes school, despite my lingering worries about the smallness of the school and the lack of facilities and opportunities compared to bigger, shinier schools.

The other day I did a talk at a lovely secondary school, and then workshops with year sevens. One of the young writers asked me 'why does a book need to be copyedited? Why should it matter if the spelling is correct as long as people can understand what's being written?' It matters because it does I suppose, but I can see her point. I am always interested in Fred's writing, I am fascinated by how unstable language can be, how stretchy it is, how unreliable the step from the spoken to the written - it seems every second word has a rule-breaker: a silent letter, or unexpected diapthong. There is pleasure that, in a way, Fred's language is still private, still held within the embrace of the family. There is pleasure in the intimacy involved in deciphering codes, an intimacy perhaps that I am betraying by sharing her writing here.

Sitting beside me on the table is a book Fred has made herself, roughly stapling together the pages, which do not quite line up. It's title is THE BIG BOOK OF SICRIS. The first page is filled with a floating mysterious question mark. The next says: "DO YOU NOw ThaT PReRNS CAN Die BeFoRe CHiLDReN?" This secret is obviously so big, and so silencing, that for some days now the rest of the pages have remained blank.

'Haa Haa Haa. I hav a plan.'

This is written on the blackboard in the hallways. I discovered it walking past, and I could hear Fred in the bedroom, alone in her room, speaking aloud. There is something sinister about mispellings too, something that threatens cohesion, sanity, the order of things. Language is a series of objects we arrange. If we carefully lined our shelves with broken things: eyeless ruptured dolls, teacups with a bite taken out fo them, worm-filled apples, we would probably seem quite mad. Encountering mispellings is like seeing headless ghosts or zombies, things that have created life from the leftovers, the animated dead.

'Ponies the past went past we.'

But there is a poetry to the mispelled too. It implies an independence from authority, a boundless creativity that goes right down to the basic building blocks of language. And when they come from children they contribute to this intuitive sense that children are closer to the source than we are, the rich, wild source where imagination and creativity spring from. It is obvious that to Fred, words are as malleable as playdough, and they can be pushed and moulded as necessary.

At the moment, Una is in the bath saying to Fred, who is pretending to be deaf: 'Why do you need to not hear?' The surprising cadence of their idiosyncratic syntax informs my writing and changes the way I make sentences. I feel sometimes that I am the zombie, or the vampire, feeding off their jangling, living, dansing words, the music of their mis/spellings and mis/speakings.

POWM BOOK

I woke up to a present from Fred. She'd made the book herself,
illustrated it and written the poems while Martin and I slept in.

POWM BOOK BY FRED

I WENT TO THE HOS
TO DANS WID IT
OV COS I WILL GO

I went to the horse
to dance with it of course
I will go

DUC WENT TO THE PUK
WID SHR BABBYS

Duck went to the park
with her babies

AOOOWS I LUVE THE
AOOWURTHEBEST

Owl I love
the owl the best

GRARRABO WIY
URYOOG RA

Grey rainbow why
are you grey

GODBIY THE END

Ssh...I'm very busy and Important

Normal blogging will resume soon. I am starting to be a bit swamped. I am teaching five classes this semester and writing a novel with a friend that we've promised to get finished by the end of May (We started writing it 3 weeks ago).
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. ..
Well, look at it this way, at least it should be finished before I have to start marking.
(More on the collaborative novel later, the contract is still in the works, so I won't speak it's name yet, but we're about half way in and it's terribly fun, not the least because chapters such spring up overnight - as if the novel speaks back to me.)
Life has been busy and stressful and hectic and costly (like the washing machine broke) and sometimes I feel like I'm working my arse off just to keep our heads above water (which I sorta am). But then there are days like yesterday, where Una and I went out for the day to the library and to treat ourselves to organic fruit & vegetables and eat chips in a cafe, and then last night, Fred and I went to a free screening of The Emperor's New Clothes at the St Andrew's hall and walked home in the DARK, which was so joyously spooky and starry.
Six is a magical, wondrous age and I am enjoying the new insights Fred is giving me. She is also an editor in the making and here is why:
Every night we read four books. Fred picks two. Una picks two. Sometimes they don't like each other's choices, though usually they do. Anyway, the other night Una picked Angelina Ballerina. (Una is the aspiring ballerina in the house, to Fred ballet is a form of unkindness enacted upon little girls and boys.) Still, Angelina ticks a few boxes. Fred likes tutus for example, and mice, and teeny little worlds. We all pore over the last page, showing a cross-section of the theatre and work out where we'd like to sit, Fred included. Even so, Fred does not like Angelina Ballerina. Not the books, not the tv series. When I was reading it the other day, we got halfway through the book and she said suddenly 'That's why I don't like this book.' And I said 'why?' And she said, quite simply, 'Because I like her mum and dad better than I like Angelina.' I think she nailed it. (I know that at least one of my favourite blog readers is an Angelina fan, so to her I say sorry. But AB is a bit of a pain in the arse.)

Heaven and Earth

In the last day or so, Fred has been asking about God again. Who was the first person? Did God make the trees? The rocks? The road? Do you believe in God? Please, Mummy, please, please believe in God. It amuses me that she is still using the female pronoun for God. I don't think I'll ever quite know where she got the idea that God is a black woman (the prep teacher is quite sure it wasn't her), but I am never going to say anything to disenchant her.

I am trying to field her questions with dignity and respect, without actually betraying my own agnostic-leaning-towards-atheist views (I am not anti-religion, I just simply can't believe that God exists. A shame, because I quite like the idea of church.) She first began asking about God last year when her Papa was in hospital and we passed a room set aside for quiet prayer. She has seen her Papa radically decline (and improve and decline again) in his health, and for a small, deeply empathetic child who has just started to get her head around death and thinks she can fix everything 'all on her lone', this has been a distressing experience. As soon as we began talking about God she latched onto the concept whole-heartedly. For a child who believes easily in fairies and vampires and fairytales, God is no challenge. The basics of God are more plausible and simpler to grasp than science - we evolved from monkeys?! Mummy and Daddy made me how?? - and I guess that's some of the appeal of God for everyone.

We've had the conversation enough times now that I answer fairly automatically, sometimes not even listening to my own answers. Even so, I was not prepared for the way this conversation would go:

'Did God make the trees?'
'Some people believe god made the trees.'
'Did she make the rocks?'
'Yes.'
'Did she make the roads.'
'Well, people believe God made people, but people made the roads.'
'No,' she says emphatically. 'God made the roads.' (I guess roads are as concrete and permanent as rocks to a five year old.)
'Oh,' I say. I'm bored of this conversation and always mildly irritated when she asks me a question then contradicts the answer. If you already know, then why ask, smarty pants? I look out the car window. We're curbside, in the suburb of Dandenong, waiting for Martin who is test driving a small blue manual car. A waterpipe has burst, and I am watching clay-coloured water bubbling up from the gutter. It's making me feel sick and uneasy because there are still fires in the state and suddenly this seems like water that should be somewhere else, doing its job, instead of gurgling uselessly onto the road in the middle of industrial estate.
Perhaps reading my mind, Fred asks me: 'Did God make fire?'
My attention snaps. Warily, I answer: 'What do you think?'
'No. God didn't make fire. I think the bad man that is god made the fire.'
For some reason the conversation stopped there. Maybe Una interrupted us, or maybe Martin came back. Maybe Fred or I changed the topic, someone suddenly bleated for a drink or a fizzy-good (the fruit tingles I carry in my handbag as emergency bribery on long car trips). I can't remember.

I have been nutting Fred's response out since. Does she mean the devil? I can't imagine that she would have any concept of the devil, but this bipolar schism intrigues me - the good and wonderful black woman God who made the world, a malevolent male entity who is also God and made fire. Or does she simply mean humans, people, does she have an insight into fire that I wouldn't expect her to have, that sometimes they are deliberately lit? Likely I won't ever know the answer to these questions. It's worth pointing out here (many Australian readers will know already) that there is a high profile religious nutter who claims that the bushfires were God's punishment following our recent laws decriminalising abortion. I'm not going to discuss that here, except to say that I am utterly certain about one thing: Fred's god would never do that. Fred's god loves children, loves the world she has made, and all the dead become angels. Fred's god is the only kind of god I have patience for.

Sometimes I think if the little local church next to the school still operated I would take Fred. The idea of driving into Panton Hill to go to church feels, on a purely selfish level, too intense, too much of a commitment. But I feel I want to give her the chance to develop this interest in spiritual matters even though her views don't match mine, and I would like her to have access to a different world view than my own: for I know there are more things in heaven and earth than can be dreamed of in my philosophy. For the moment, all I can do is answer her questions as honestly as I can, and know that this is part of how she's working out the nature of existence. Maybe, after all, she can teach me something, if I sit quietly and listen properly.

Because I don't have any ideas of my own...

Sally Goes to the Jungle, by Fred
(aged five and not quite three quarters but more than a half)

Once upon a time Sally was taking her dog for a walk (Picture of Sally, with ruby red lips and her orange dog)
when she saw a man. He said. "How do you do?" "Very well, thank you," she said. (picture of Sally, man, both with red smiles, and her PINK dog. Possible inconsistency, possible unremarked upon capacity of dog to change colour at will. Frederique, please see me re foreshadowing/internal logic/consistency issues.)
Suddenly she stepped into a rock and when she stepped out of the rock she was in a jungle. When she touched the leaves they fell down and made a river. (I just touch typed all that - woohoo. Go me. Picture of Sally, a bit smooshed to the edge of the page, pink dog and green leaves and green river. Where does she come up with this stuff? The leaves becoming a river. I'm a bit jealous. Damn her and her unsullied access to raw Freudian imagery.)
Then she saw a friendly alligator. (You know it's friendly because it's red and it hasn't got any teeth. I must admit I thought Sally's dog had undergone another colour change until I realised it had seven legs. Dogs don't have seven legs of course, but possibly alligators do.) "How are you?" she asked. (Sally is a very thoughtful girl.) "Achoo!" he said. "I have a bit of a cold." (picture of a red alligator. There is a big scribble where his head should be, no doubt because the sneeze is of a particularly severe magnitude.)
"Crocodile, do you know the way back to my village?" "Yes, I do. Go back into the rock and come out in 15 minutes." (picture of a house, with a window and a disembodied head but no door. Despite the floating, featureless head, it is really quite sweet. Hmm, looking again it strikes me that perhaps it is a door, albeit rather high off the ground and with no steps, and the head is a door handle. Must check with Fred tomorrow.)
"Daddy, Mummy, I'm home!" (I like the way she used dialogue to imply action, also this is a good example of clever use of narrative time, where not everything needs to be told. Well done, Fred. Picture of Mum, Dad and Sally. Mum is very prominent, Dad has a jaunty smile. Sally's eye is outside her hair, which indicates a possible breach of containment, but does not concern me. After all, her smile is bigger than her body.)
And she went to bed after a nice dinner. The End. (A very tiny Sally in bed, her smile almost covered up by the blanket but you can tell she is still smiling. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the dog. I'm rather worried that it might be still in the jungle. And I have my concerns just how friendly the alligator will be without Sally around politely inquiring after its health. After all, just like Sally, it has Appetites, it might want a Nice Dinner too.)