Una's letter

To Mr ____,

I very strongly believe that students at our school should be allowed to be in a strong relationship with each other. This, in other words, is having a boyfriend or girlfriend.

A lot of boys and girls in our school have a boyfriend or girlfriend. However, teachers spoke to their students about us not being allowed to anymore. I think this is outrageous! I have some reasons to support my thoughts.

My first reasons is, I think it helps us practice handling big emotions. When we are older, we will become more serious about it, but in the meantime, we should practice. We need to know what to do with them. No teacher expects a prep child to be able to read in a day, right? They need to PRACTICE! And so do we with big emotions like the ones some of us have!

My second reason is, love is, of course, a normal part of life! Almost every human being loves someone at the very least ONCE in their life! And so children at our school do too!

And my third and final reason is that it is certainly not necessary to feel ashamed about the emotions you have toward someone else! I think it is disappointing that our lovely school would turn down something like that!

Concluding, I hope that you will agree with me and make sure we take away this terrible rule.

Sincerely,

Una  

Last term at my kids' school, the grades fives and sixes were talked to by their teachers about 'boyfriends' and 'girlfriends'. In line - most likely - with most primary schools, the official position was that primary school students are too young to have relationships*. While the rule is mostly around public displays of affection, it seemed to Una that the rule was too broad and applied to all definitions of 'a relationship' (remember in primary school 'going together' didn't necessarily mean touching), and she came home and wrote this letter. She's given me permission to post it here.

Edited
I had previously written a longer blog post about some unintended consequences of this rule, the fact that by making bans, students may not feel safe to access support and guidance from teachers and school leaders in matters of interpersonal relationships. It was brought to my attention that, by writing about a specific situation Una was in might lead to people in the community identifying a particular boy. While I feel no judgment or animosity against any child, I'd hate for people to think I was finger-pointing, and so I've eliminated that story from this blog. I will only say that it has been resolved with help from the school.

However, I will stand by this: I believe strongly that instead of shutting down conversations by making bans or denying some students' feelings, students need to be given vocabulary to deal with their feelings. The simple and key message here, to me, is 'no means no'. Students can and should, be given the language and communication skills to negotiate interpersonal relationships, including consent. A clear message that 'no means no' helps any student not ready for 'crushes' to set a clear boundary, and offers institutional support to all students. It also sets girls and boys up for more complex scenarios later.

I have worked hard with this school over the past two years to help them communicate their strengths. I advocate for this school because I believe in the community. It's a great school, and I feel lucky that my kids have such a strong and caring place - think how safe and trusting Una must have felt to write this brave letter. I'd hate for anything I wrote to reflect poorly on the school. I believe in the values of the school, and I think this letter encompasses them. I also believe in authentic student voice - these are Una's own words and her own values, and I respect her for writing this letter.

I posted this on my blog because I was proud of Una, and because I think she's right, and because I felt it spoke to a broader conversation about young people's rights and responsibilities, and I find her views offer a balanced, and refreshing, perspective.

*I was later told this is not an official position of the school and it was only Una's class that had this talk.

Time travel according to Una

Una says, 'I wonder what happened to Amelia Earhart. Freddy said there was crackling sounds on her radio, like she was asking for help, but I don’t believe that, do you?'

Una says, 'I’d like to meet Amelia Earhart and ask her.'

This leads to a conversation about time travel. Una says, 'If you go back in time would you meet yourself?' 

I talk about continuity. I say, 'Maybe its impossible to time travel and see yourself.'

'And see your butt,' Avery says.

'I think it’s possible,' says Fred.

'Just ill advised?' I ask.

'But it’s impossible to time travel,' says Una. 'Because absolutely everybody would have to do it.'

'Why?'

'There couldn’t be a life without you. If you weren’t in that world everything else would have to change. So everybody would have to come with you.'

And then, just little by little, there wasn't any big epiphany or anything, I came to see that things were never really right between us and that they never would have been. It took about two years, maybe longer, to understand that. And now she's married and I'm not, but I'm really happy we're not together.

And it makes me realize that I have been time traveling. It's just that I've been traveling into the future at 60 minutes per hour. And maybe that's how we fix the past.

Sean Cole, 'The Leap' This American Life

This conversation has been sitting in my drafts for months. The other day, after we'd time travelled into the future at a rate of 60 minutes per hour, Una tells me she'd like to work in a museum, because 'she's very interested in Amelia Earhart'.

Conversations with the living

Tonight Avery asks, 'Are we new?'
I say, 'You're pretty new.'
'No,' he says. 'Are we new.'
I say, 'There's been nobody like us before.'
Avery says, 'Robots are people and people are robots.'

I talk to my dad on the phone. He has gone from the hospital into aged care. He says, 'when I went into the hospital I thought my time was up.' He says, 'I still think it might be actually. I can't get out of bed, or move around like other people. I'm stuck here.' I ask him to hang around till Una and I come visit. He says my brother's already told him to hang around a bit longer than that. My sister is coming from England next week. There's so much to hang around for in that strange halfway place that's like living and dying all at once. I say, 'But if you need to go, go.'

On the day we get our 5 month old schnauzer, Swoosie, desexed I let Una, 9, stay home from school because it's Fred's last day on school camp. On the way to pick Swoosie up, she says what if Swoosie was already pregnant? I tell her about the cat we used to have, Janeway, who we had desexed when she was pregnant. 'They just take it all out. But they're not really kittens. Just embryos, just clumps of cells.' We talk about abortions and how sometimes women can end pregnancies if they're young, or don't want the baby. Una asks if women can get desexed. I tell her usually it's the man who gets the operation, because it's easier for them. We talk about whether a dog and a cat can have babies. No, but I tell her a donkey and a horse can. We wonder if a cat and a tiger could. She asks if two women or two men can...you know. I say, 'they can't make a baby together.' She says, 'I know. But can they have sex?' Yes, I tell her. She says, 'I wouldn't mind being a lesbian, but I think the hard part about it would be finding other people who want to be lesbians too.'

A Great Light for Childhood

Something has happened while we lay on the rug on the lawn.
The babies are out here with us. We’d left the big children
in the dark house, watching television, their boy and our oldest girl,
turning ten and eleven this year, almost getting to the too cool stage.
We are outside, finishing glasses of cider and wine
enjoying the new January weather, the sun flickering in and out,
playing hide and seek with shadows, but it’s a great light.
We are talking about the grape vine that’s grown, vividly unkempt,
as high as the second storey balcony, ruffling the breeze.
We'd taken off the babies' nappies, let them play with air on their skin.
Anyway, something has happened. The girls come running
from the other side of the house, tumbling through the light.
Recently they’ve started singing together, taking different parts
in the back seat of the car, which is a change from the fighting.
It’s the third day of a new year and we are already wearing it in,
later we’ll get the sprinkler going for the kids to play under.
I can’t get over the light. The girls come racing over the grass,
words falling out of them in the rush to tell, we smile up at them
and the eight year old tips into my hand the tooth she has finally shed,
her first one, and when she smiles, I see the gap.

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.

A palette of red and green and white

One of my favourite annual Christmas traditions is raspberry picking in Kinglake. When you go back to the same place once a year, it's an amazing checkpoint of how your family is growing and changing. As we drove up the Kinglake road, Una reminisced about the dog who ate her sandwich when she was three years old. Not so long ago. A lifetime ago. This year Avery went picking too. He was very approving of the whole business. 

Before we drove up to the farm the sky was high, the sun a dazzling white hole in the dazzling white sky. "It'll hold," said the woman in the general store in Panton Hill where we detoured to get petrol. Fred and Una were squabbling about something when the news came on, that twenty children and six teachers in a school in Connecticut had been killed by a gunman. Martin quickly switched it off, but the girls had heard.

'Why would they put that on the radio?' Una asked. Then, quietly, 'Kids died? Between five and ten? Some of them the same age as me?'

We waited a while and put the radio back on, music filled the car. It always surprises me that Fred knows the words to all the songs. 

I looked out the window, my eyes filled with tears.

The road from St Andrews to Kinglake is tight and twisty, with a very steep drop down the passenger side. Una and I clutched at the car and tried not to moan aloud. Martin is a very safe driver but he does not always feel safe. 

Kinglake is a place that lost everything, and then lived again. We have grown used to the burnt trees, and now we are used to the regrowth, we have grown with this landscape and it has shaped us in hidden ways. 

When we drove out of the farm after the raspberry picking, we watched as the sky descended to earth. The landscape was all but negated by thick white fog. It seemed nothing was out there, the road apparently ending a few metres ahead of the car, but we drove on anyway, with faith that the road was still stretched ahead of our car, waiting to be found. Una cried, that the fog was thick, that the rain was falling. Martin said, 'But Una, the good thing about the fog is that everyone is being very careful, we are all driving so safely.' Headlights gazed steadfast out of the fog, appearing for a moment and disappearing, sharing that small envelope of space with us for a moment.

And then, just as we drove out of the township of Kinglake, the fog lifted, and we could see ahead for miles, over the valley, over the treetops, to the distant hills, soft with rain.

Love Story

I walked into the bottle shop with a cleanskin red I'd bought only twenty minutes before. I had Una with me.
'My husband says I bought the wrong colour,' I told the man behind the counter.
'Wrong colour?' he asked confused. He thought I meant the label.
'Red not white.'
He laughs. 'Oh right, I like that. Wrong colour.' He laughed again. 'What do you want? Semi or a chard? I've got some cold.'
'Oh, chardonay,' I said, like I have an opinion. I don't really care. I don't really know the difference, having been most of my life a red drinker - but suddenly red is too intense for me.
'Here you go, Darling,' he said.
Outside Una told me with conspiratorial quietness, 'Mum, I think that man has fallen in love with you.'
'What makes you say that?'
'He called you Darling."
I laughed. 'I'll have to watch out for him.'
Worried, Una said, 'I hope he doesn't come and take you away one day.'
'I won't let that happen,' I assured her.
Una thought about that. 'You would punch him in the nose,' said Una.

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.

Conversations after dark

Una: Those lights were very bright in my eyes.
Martin: They were bright. I flashed my lights at him to tell him his lights were too bright.
Una: (thoughtful pause.) He or she.
Martin: Yes.
Una: Why do you always say he when you're talking about someone you don't know?
Martin: Do I?
Una: Yes, when you mean she or he, you always say he. Why do you do that?
Martin: Social conditioning.
Una: I know why Daddy always says he. Because he likes boys the best.

...
Una: I am going to close my eyes and dream about Raphael. I am going to dream he gives me the true love kiss and then we will dance the tango.

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."

Little Mouse

"Don't look in my school bag," Una told me as we left Guides on a cold dark Wednesday evening. "I have a surprise for you."

I did not look in her bag.

When we got home I took Avery (who had fallen asleep in the car) to the bedroom and tried to resettle him. Una went straight to her bag. But it was Martin, not forewarned in the least, who intercepted "the surprise". I entered the lounge to find Una howling and Martin interrogating her. In his hand: a dead mouse, wrapped in a tissue.

*Surprise!*

Una and her partner in crime, the grade one girl (singular, Una is the prep girl singular so they were destined to be friends) found a dead mouse at school. It was under the water fountain on the concrete. So cold. Poor little mouse.

We have had something of a mouse plague this year, all the rain I suppose. Our own house has been Visited by them - squeak squeak scratch scratch - and one was kind enough to die in my ugg boot, which puts the ugh in ugg boot I can tell you. I will not tell you the story of how I discovered this mouse because I haven't recovered from the trauma yet. I will say there was a pop, a smell and a strange sensation between my toes, but, unfortunately, not all at once. There now. My trauma is your trauma.

Anyway, Una's mouse was at school, and Una and Isabel wanted to have a little funeral for it. Erica, their teacher, put the kibosh on this plan for all the usual reasons adults think children shouldn't play with dead mice. Unbeknownst to Erica a tissue was procured, the mouse was stealthily wrapped and hidden away in Una's bag. This much we determined, because as soon as Una realised she was in trouble, she began to fabricate - insisting, for example, that her teacher had suggested she bring it home. (She rapidly reversed this story when Martin bluffed that he was going to call Erica.)

Oh, I understand the fascination and in writing this down we seem to me to be cruel parents. In early autumn that other star of children's stories the butterfly proliferated in our area (funny how one doesn't say "a plague of butterflies"). Una found a dead one at school, a perfect specimen, and brought it home to show me. We put it in the magnified bug catcher and studied it closely, marvelling at the scales on its wings, the hairs of its body, the inquisitive proboscis. This mouse was as perfectly interesting to Una as the butterfly had been, and perhaps if it hadn't been a Guide night, if we'd had a bit more patience or energy, if it hadn't been dinner time and we hadn't all been hungry and cold we might have slowed this down a little, taken the time to talk through it, paid the mouse some respects. As it was Una clung howling onto Martin as he gave the mouse a quick burial without ceremony. It was, after all, almost seven o'clock and we hadn't yet eaten dinner.

"Everyone says you get sick from touching mice," Una wailed at me as I took her on my knee and tried to comfort her, attempting to explain the difference between mice and butterflies. "But I'm not sick and it isn't true." Una, a gifted and easy liar herself, is terribly self-righteous in the face of other lies - whether they are her friend's whoppers (Miss Grade One Singular is adorably prolific in the tall tales department herself), a grown up's kindly intended white lies or even generalisations or exaggerations, though Una is fond of a little hyperbole herself.

It was a moment where adult and child's worlds were impossibly divergent. We simply could not capture the child like wonder at the intimate smallness of the mouse corpse, its static dollhouse perfection in death. She could not comprehend our disgust, our loathing.

Still I am touched by their collusion. There was something so tender about that white tissue. Lies are revealing, sometimes they are truer than bare facts. Behind every one is the truth of Una's self, the clarity of her spirit, revealed in her wide blue eyes. And I am touched by her guileless act, the gift of the mouse (like a cat), and by her utter disbelieving dismay when this gift was so rudely rejected. I am reminded at how when you are a child you live in a parallel world and it can be hard to slip between real and imaginary, it is so utterly painful to have this space intruded upon by the giants of this world: us. No wonder her heart went out to a mouse, so small in the face of death.

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.

The Endsister

Una says into the room:
I know what an endsister is
And nobody hears her but me.
It’s a kind of a ghost

My children are ghosts.
Visitations.

Later
She says it again
Pressing more insistently
Against the air.

Frederique
Who is seven
And has only recently uncovered
All the secrets of the known universe,
Corrects her

It's an ancestor.
It’s like
Your grandmother’s grandmother.

Una’s disappointment and mine
Make the same pale figure.

She shimmers once,
More real than your grandmother's grandmother,
Before she disappears.

Lines written while sitting up with a sick child

Inside our darkened lounge kitchen dining
(one space for all our living)
The clock keeps a steady heart
The tin roof shrinks at intervals
As outside the temperature drops.
The sharp contractions sound
Like a giant curious finger
Rousing life in this insect house.
Tap tap. Tap tap tap.
Sometimes it finds its rhythm
But it can’t keep up
With the clock’s steadfast drum.

Today in the late winter sun
Una and I walked the dirt tracks.
We stopped to talk to a neighbour who was
In her garden raking up leaves
To feed the tamed appetites of two garden fires.
We marvelled at the roundness of me:
–Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?
–It’s a baby brother, Una said.
The neighbour said
–I have a name for you
And offered it up, a single word,
Muttered over her twin fires like a spell.
–It means resolute protector.
Una and I went further up the hill
Her short legs soon growing tired of the climb
We took a short cut behind the houses
Through the bush.
We discovered a toadstool
She stumbled on the downwards path
Air and light entered us.

The fridge whirrs into life.
Una on the couch
Dwells at the border of sleep
Her eyelids fluttering open.
Tap. Tap tap.

Deep in the well of my flesh
The unnamed
Baby in darkness
Taps back.

Una the Naughty Little Sister

Una has an interesting relationship with the My Naughty Little Sister stories by Dorothy Edwards. She loves them because they are an absolutely True Story of her Life. They are the Chronicles of Una. But she is also slightly concerned. Why is it always her that is naughty? Why is never Freddy?
"Maybe they are made up books about somebody else?" I venture, in the face of her ardent belief. "Maybe it's not you at all."
"No," she insists. She is the naughty little sister, even though we seldom use the word naughty in our house.
This belief is deeply ingrained. One day I tell her, "Maybe it's time for me to teach you how to sew?"
"I already know how to sew," she grumps. In the face of my disbelief she adds: "Remember? In the naughty little sister?"
On another occasion she comes up to me and says, "I would like to try spongy trifle again."
"Okay..." I say, with a question mark in my voice. When have I ever made spongy trifle?
"I think I would like it more now." And I realise, it is the naughty little sister who has tried it before (without much success by the sounds of things).
Una has impressive powers of recall when it comes to The Naughty Little Sister. She knows more of the stories than I do because she listens to them on tape* at night in the bedroom she shares with Fred. She remembers the time she (as the naughty little sister) bit Father Christmas and when she went and visited a grumpy neighbour on her own.
It is not that surprising that these books have filled the gaps in Una's own memory. False memory making is a past-time of both children. "I remember when I was in your tummy and I wanted you to wake up so I kicked you and kicked you," says Fred. "Remember when I was a toddler and couldn't speak properly and I said Mama? Papa?' prompts Una (to which I respond with a non-commital mm.) As these stories get more elaborate, I find myself internally rebelling. I sometimes feel threatened by their made up memories, as if my own real memories of their infancies are being undermined.
From their point of view there is already so much in their short lives that has disappeared (something they are constantly reminded of as this pregnancy sends Martin and I down memory lane to a time when they were present, but before their conscious memory begins). Fred barely recalls kids she went to kinder with two years ago (and is surprisingly uncomfortable about going back into this shadowy half-remembered place, now that Una has just commenced her first term at the same kinder - I remember similar physical unease as a child at the idea of going "back"). In my experience with Fred she had an uncanny memory up to the age of about 3 or 4 - she would ask about playmates she hadn't seen for months and despite the fact that she only watched ABC Kids on very rare occasions her product recognition was nothing short of alarming. Her memory, while still good, is now far more selective. I guess she's asking a lot more of it as she learns to read and spell and do maths, as she consumes information about the human body and Japan and the difference between front and back support at gymnastics.
For Una finding such a clear record of a life that resonates with her feelings and experiences and sense of self has more than compensated for these black spots, for the shadowy patches of forgetting. By taking on the identity of the never named Naughty Little Sister she can put a narrative to those feelings, to her sense of who she is and her place in the world.
There will be a time, not very far from now I suppose, when Una has to face the fact that these memories are false. For example as I wrote this post I asked her, "What's the earliest thing you remember?"
"I remember things," she said. "Some things. I remember when I was the naughty little sister. Freddy had a doll and it said Mama when you leaned it back and closed its eyes when you tipped it forward and opened its eyes when you stood it up and I took it, and I threw it out the window–"
"No!" said Fred, who has come home from school out of sorts and in the mood to contradict (usually she is very indulgent of Una's naughty little sister fantasies). "I NEVER had a doll like that."
Una begins to cry. "You did! Yes you did!"
And Fred, in the face of Una's false remembering begins to cry too. Martin intervenes, and all the while Una is insisting that Fred DID have that very doll, she did, she did.
Later I ask her what she remembers from when she wasn't the naughty little sister. She understands the question straight away, but answers with the stories we've supplied her with (her first word, 'Hi!', the time she chopped her finger off). I suspect that it's not that the memories aren't there, it's more that she doesn't know what to recall, or how to bring it to mind, she isn't sure how to answer the question. Her own memories are sensual flashes triggered by a smell or a place or a feeling, or implicit (remembered in the unconscious actions of the bodies, like walking, talking, holding a pen, threading a bead) - they aren't a narrative with a beginning, middle and end.

The real naughty little sister?

One day sitting on the couch, cuddling into my belly, Una says, "Can you write a book called the big little sister?" Almost as if its the act of writing that makes reality. She is asking me to write her into being. And look, here it is, a placeholder for memory, if we are both to forget this time in our lives when she became the naughty little sister.
And in the end, how much more authentic (or less?) are her memories of being the naughty little sister than the stories we have told her about herself. As adults I think we assume that our memories are the sum total of who we are and I think we definitely privilege "episodic" (or narrative) memory over implicit memory and sensual memory. We are inclined to construct ourselves through memory... As I mentioned in my previous post, in Star Trek - but also in Buffy, Lost and many other popular narratives - (conscious) memory is identity and loss of memory threatens cohesiveness of self.

Memory is identity, at least in part. But memory is also fiction. It is unreliable. It is imprecise and relative and tricksy. Memory is myth-making. And myths always borrow from previous stories, from the accumulated history of human memory. Una's conflation of her own memories with the stories of the naughty little sister strikes me as a very literal, external performance of a process that is normally a lot more discreet: the way we incorporate books into our psyches, how books cohabit with our souls, how books weave themselves into our complex neural web and become - sometimes indistinguishably - enmeshed in memory and self.

As a compulsive reader throughout childhood this thought is astonishing and reassuring, that the books are still there, and part of me.

As a writer, it is both a powerful thought and an extremely daunting one.

*Thanks Jelly, for the book and the tapes.

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.