12 May 2015
A couple of days ago, my feed was full of people saying “Happy Mothers Day” or “Happy Mother’s Day” which are both very lovely and very nice and very festive and yes, both are deemed grammatically correct.
But they were all followed swiftly by a bunch of posts where everybody vied to connect with people who weren’t (and I quote) “mothers in the traditional sense”.
“Happy Mother’s Day to the single dads who are mothers to their children.”
Or like Dads. You know, who are of course great but are, um, Dads.
“Happy Mother’s Day to grandmothers and great-grandmothers alive and dead.”
Or like mothers who had kids a while ago. But are still, um, mothers.
“Happy Mother’s Day to the women who are mothers in spirit but can’t have babies.”
Or as one comment so eloquently put it (*sarcasm alert) “I love it when people feel sorry for me, especially when they tag me so now everybody knows I can’t have fucking babies.”
“Happy Mother’s Day to the women out there who inspired me ‘as much or maybe even more than my own mother'”
Cheeses. I hope your mum is not on Facebook. Oh she is? Charming. Bet that made her feel good.
“Happy Mother’s Day to the mums that partner the birth mother”
Or um, the mother.
It went on. So many explanations of what people actually meant when they said “Mum”.
I get it. In brief –
“We would like to wish everybody who has ever been nice to us, and who is in possession of a vagina, a really lovely day. “
And that is absolutely ace. I’m all for saying that. In fact, lets make it a day.
But it’s also okay to just wish Mums a lovely day without specifying the six billion different ways that a woman can mother.
By defining mothering in all those different ways you are essentially implying that there is only one definition of ‘mum’ and the rest of those that mother need to be patted on the heads and given gold stars for taking part.
We all know that’s absolutely bollocks.
Not to mention grossly insensitive and incredibly patronising.
You say “Happy Hanukkah” to some, “Merry Christmas” to others, “Happy Diwali” to some others and “May the force be with you” to others again. None right, none wrong.
You say “I love my 5 kids” not “I love my vaginally birthed child, my c-section child, my two adopted children and my sister’s child who I have brought up since birth because Annie fucked off with that no hoper to a Byron Bay commune and I’ve never seen her again.”
Patronising people by labelling them in public displays of sensitivity is one of the grossest things we indulge in collectively on social media. Even when we do it with good intentions.
So can we stop? And just let mums be mums.
Unless they are dads of course.
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7 May 2015
Mamas of the world!
(And the occasional Dad. But men are generally not so freaking arrogant in this regard. Fact)
Calm down a little. I get that you grew a human or 19 and you birthed them and now you spend all your time worrying about whether or not you are getting it right.
I really do get it. I spend all my life worrying that a cross word or my inability to find taking them to the park the biggest thrill of my life has RUINED them for life.
I get that. I want my girls to have the best life possible. Like all parents.
Which means accepting this.
I am not the best at everything.
And guess what? You aren’t the best at everything either.
You’re just not. And you don’t have to be.
Let me tell you a secret. Other people know stuff.
I KNOW. WHAT THE HEY-HARRY-HOE AM I TAKING ABOUT HERE!?
WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT RELIGION AM I PEDDLING?
I’m letting you know that just because people don’t do it the same way as you does not mean they are doing it wrong. Or you are doing it better.
You’re doing your best. I’m doing my best.
I still can’t get tomato sauce stains out of clothes. Or sew. Or cook. Or sing. Or knit. Or craft. Or grow herbs. Or keep flowers alive in a garden. Or indeed, demonstrate any talents for my children to learn at my knee by our non-existent fireplace.
In fact, in the just over 4.5 years since I first birthed a human I have not even learned to use ‘my goodness’ instead of ‘oh fuck’.
Ever.
But I tell you something. My girls are doing just fine. And that’s because other people are great at things. And kind. And good. And interesting. And know stuff I don’t.
It’s because they have another parent who loves them and (thankfully) likes going to the park.
But it is also because they have friends who are interested in baking and sewing and singing and dancing and growing vegetables. It’s because they have teachers who can read the same book to them over and over and over and over again long after that once beloved book has completely sucked the joy out of living for me.
It’s because they have friends who are stricter with them than we are and use words like ‘routine’ and ‘because I said so’ and would never let their children leave the house with unbrushed hair or no shoes.
It’s because they have friends who helicopter. Who free range. Who do both in such dizzying succession they get vertigo. They have friends who can properly whistle and fish and think the word bum is the funniest thing ever.
It’s because they have friends who aren’t allowed to dirty their clothes or wear no shoes. Who are called ‘princess’ even when they are not role playing or defending the castle. Who eat vegetables all the time and never, ever eat meat. Who can also name every single character on a favourite TV show.
It’s because they have friends who think differently from me. Who are interested in different things from me. Who have conversations with them that I would never think of having with them because I didn’t even know about the thing to talk about the thing.
And now that I’ve heard about the thing I’m still no wiser.
My daughters are great girls because they are surrounded by an array of people that love them. They blossom because they, like all small people, have a thirst for knowledge and a genuine wonder about the world and the people in it. And the dinosaurs that used to be in it. And stuff.
So much wondering about stuff.
And lots of those people are much better at things than me. In fact, some of these people are the best people I know at just being people. And then on top of that they know the year Pluto stopped being a planet and what brand of butter they use without seeing the box.
And I think people are being a tiny bit, actually a fair bit, arrogant believing that their way is the only way that your children can learn all there is to know or that by only letting them do things one way they can mould them exactly as they wish.
You didn’t know everything in the world before you grew a human, why would you think that you know all there is to know now?
Why not just accept that you are great at growing and birthing great humans and that you are always going to love them with a ferocity that surprises you no matter how old they get.
And that you love them so much you will always try to be the best version of yourself.
Of yourself. Not of some commercially crafted or societally influenced version of the perfect parent.
Hear this. Really listen.
You don’t have to be the best at everything to be a good mum. Or a good dad.
Your small people are going to be pretty cool little human beings.
Mine are.
Not because of me. Not always in spite of me.
Not because I’m the best at mothering.
Not because I’m the best at anything.
And that’s the best.
****
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4 May 2015
Okay, so a few weeks ago I was reading the paper and saw an article about the James Turrell exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. You’ll have read about it – the tours were conducted with everybody nude and it was a definite case of don’t read the comments.
There was this photo.
And I instantly recognised Benjamin Law. INSTANTLY.
And you want to know something – I had no way of knowing he was even there until I read Monica Tan’s article about the retrospective AFTER the event. And when I discovered the information my brain went “I KNEW IT” like this was the sole reason Ms Tan had for writing the article.
And it’s been playing on my mind how it has come to be that I glanced at a photo in a newspaper and instantly recognised a man I don’t know at an event I didn’t know he was going to in a city he doesn’t live in.
No, I’m not a stalker – and I don’t know where he lives exactly but I do know that he is a Sydney based journalist and that photo was taken in Canberra. So there! He writes a regular column in the paper I read every weekend. His articles have been in everything from the The Australian Financial Review to Kill Your Darlings.
But see, this is not the first time I’ve recognised Benjamin Law from the back of his head. I fan-girled him last year after realising I was sitting behind (a fully dressed) him at a Men Of Letters event. Yep, I INSTANTLY recognised this man I’d never met.
Literally, I have only read his columns and articles – I’ve not seen him talk, not read his books (mental note: add them to Goodreads) or accidentally stumbled across him on imageboard 4chan in the great 2014 Celebgate.
So this ability to recognise him INSTANTLY is kinda strange.
I mentioned to a friend ‘How weird is it that I recognised Benjamin Law from behind in a national newspaper?’.
“Who’s Benjamin Law?”
Shit.
To another friend “Have you ever recognised a man you’ve never met from behind?”
“Al, um. No.”
Damn.
“Do you know who Benjamin Law is?”
“No. YES I do. Dated that Sienna Miller”
“That was Jude Law not Benjamin Law.”
“Really? Who is Benjamin Law?”
“The journalist??”
“Nope, is he one of your lefty fellows?”
Sigh. No. Well yes. But no.
“Do you know who Benjamin Law is?”
“Yeah, writer chap isn’t he?”
“YES! Would you recognise him if you saw him?”
“Hmmmm, should I?”
Sigh. Sure he’s no Kardashian but he writes a lot of stuff. Interesting stuff. Funny stuff. Yes, I read his stuff regularly. But you know, in the paper once it’s been edited and published and stuff. Not over his shoulder as he taps it out on his laptop the first time.
That would be really weird.
So here I am with a conundrum. My super power as it turns out is recognising ‘Benjamin Law – the writer chap’ from the back of his head. That’s it. I can’t even begin to work out how they’re going to represent me in the next Avengers movie but I don’t think it’s going to be with the likes of Scarlett Johansson.
I can’t be the only person that recognises people I’ve never met from behind. My weird ability to pick Benjamin Law from a bunch of brunettes on an escalator or in a darkened bar can not be a stand alone talent.
Is it? Really? Nope. Surely I have a wolf pack? Hello? Hello? Anybody?
What’s your unappreciated super power?
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30 Apr 2015
I get that talking about the death penalty to kids is hard. I do. But why are we only talking to our kids about human rights and unjust deaths when Indonesia or Egypt does it?
What about Ms Dhu? What about Ms Locke? What about Reza Barati? What about the kids being sexually and physically abused in concentration camps of our making? Why aren’t you condemning those who break the law when it is our government doing it not drug runners?
Don’t fill your Facebook feed lamenting the difficulty of explaining the death penalty to your children when you don’t afford the same dignity to those whose human rights are violated in your name but with less airtime, media or celebrity backers. Just don’t.
Don’t defend Tony or Bill or their gallant support for Chan and Sukumaran’s human rights when you don’t demand of them that level of integrity for the human rights of every single person. Don’t tell me your heart bleeds for their mothers and families if you don’t change your profile photo in support of the mothers and families of asylum seekers or the first Australians or the women dying every three days at the hands of their partner.
Don’t just give a shit because it’s got a hashtag and Ben Quilty and lots of media attention.
Don’t just give a shit because Chan and Sukumaran were a pastor and an artist. Give a shit because they were humans. Criminals sure but never ever deserving of state sanctioned murder. Give a shit even if they lacked remorse and had spent the last ten years sulking in the corner of the prison.
Don’t just give a shit because the media made a circus of their families grief. Give a shit because you believe that compassion is more powerful than retribution.
Don’t run me the spiel about they knew what they were in for when they broke the law. Just don’t. Because that proves nothing except you are an arsehole with the exceptional good luck never to have died when you broke the law jay walking or speeding or drinking too much. We all know what the consequences are for dumb ways to break the law it’s just that generally we are lucky enough to get away with it.
Don’t tell me the death penalty is fair for the families that lost their families to drugs. Especially if you just used the they know the consequences of their actions argument because that makes you illogical and your point of view null and void.
The execution of those eight prisoners is heartbreaking because people have been killed.
Deliberately.
Because politics.
That’s what you should be telling your children – that the violation of a person’s human rights is absolutely wrong. Every time. And that violating the human rights of somebody for political purposes is weak, pathetic and wrong. Very, very, wrong.
Tell them that no matter how horrid a person is, how poisoned their soul might be, how mean, how nasty, how criminal, how differently thinking, how differently believing they might be – they have rights. And it is our response to another individual’s human rights – no matter how great the provocation – that matters.
Justice is not vengeance. Retribution is not punishment. Power is not strength.
Tell them it doesn’t have to be like this. Tell them the world can be a better place. Tell them there are always choices. Tell them people in charge can be weak but that we live in a democracy and that we have the power to demand better of our own government as well as governments across the world.
Tell them that every life matters. Tell them that to say nothing is to condone it. Tell them that the world is a chaotic and crazy place but that the actions of every individual ripple across the universe making a difference. Tell them actions speak louder than words.
Tell them… no. Scratch that.
Get the f*&k out there and show them.
****
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28 Apr 2015
As we flew into Sydney from Dubai last Monday morning, my Cassidy was shrieking with excitement as we bounced through the turbulence during descent. The lady across me, gripping her husbands arm in a grip that would surely leave a permanent imprint, was not having such a great time.
“It’s just like a roller coaster” yells the small person, giddy with excitement. “This is such fun!!!”
The lady turned a greener shade of green and was not having fun. Thankfully she was too busy not vomiting to be able to give death glares or tut loudly but it’s unlikely Cassidy would have been deterred.
Turns out we were flying through the start of the storm that would sweep through Sydney, the Hunter, the bit up the coast, the bit inland and the bit to the west, knocking down trees, flooding properties, removing roofs, flooding creeks, buckling train lines, decimating roads, sweeping away cars, closing schools, reshaping beaches, demolishing houses, repositioning boats and killing livestock.
Over $2 billion worth of damage and 8 people dead in under 72 hours.
It was a doozy of a storm. Cyclonic they said. It absolutely dominated the papers for a few days and we giggled at the plethora of umbrellas abandoned, shook our heads at the idiots driving without lights, and felt absolutely heartbroken for the families who lost loved ones and homes. And then the sun came out and we were on to another news story.
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| These paddocks were six feet under water |
Which of course is very chipper of us and things like the Nepal earthquake, the Bali Nine executions, Princess Kate being four days late and Bruce Jenner coming out as a she all fill up the news feed pretty quickly and are important too. Yes.
But for a lot of people, the storm didn’t just interrupt their commute to work or leave them without power for a week. It’s destroyed their livelihoods. Animals have been killed, fences destroyed, feed is going sour due to water logging, crops annihilated.
Boats sit in paddocks hundreds of metres from dams, carpet is being scraped from floors and thrown onto bonfires alongside dead cows, pigs and chickens. Irrigation pipe lies tangled with flotsam stuck in barbed wire fences and beneath an enchanting blue sky, property owners are stripping it all back, counting the rising costs of uninsured loss.
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| This is a boat in a paddock. Not on purpose. |
Because it is not financially viable for most farmers to insure everything in the unlikely case of catastrophic winds and a once in a century weather patterns that got rewritten this past week as once in a decade. You insure what is most likely to be damaged and hope that not everything gets damaged at once. And when you spend $6,000 on barbed wire fences, my brief experience helping take down broken barbed wire fences on the weekend tells me you need to spend about twice that on gloves.
It’s not only the financial cost. Turns out it takes a really long time to tear down fences and put up new ones. It takes quite some time to grow animals big enough to breed or be ready for slaughter. Apparently animals are not born of the polystyrene boxes in which they appear in supermarkets! And many of these farmers do it alone, with help from partners that work full time and their school aged children and friends and family and complete randoms who show up with a few hours to spare and absolutely no feckin’ clue.
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| There were no peaches on our visit to the country this time |
We can’t fix everything in the world. I get that. I do, but it seems to me that sometimes we move right on when we no longer see something or it’s not being rammed down our throats. We focus on the big big things that are going wrong and Colin knows we can’t keep up with Mother Nature’s ill humour lately.
But we can remember to ask if people need help locally as well as overseas. We don’t need to cancel one out with the other. We can give of our time even when it is entirely not the right time for us. Because it never ever is. We can take a moment to check in and make sure our neighbours are okay once the sun comes out or the tree on their house is removed or they’ve burned their cows.
Because it takes time to recover from the unimaginable. Lots of time. And gloves.
And it does us well to remember that.
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1 Apr 2015
I know this could be as controversial as the anti-vax conversation but I need to get it out there. I don’t think people with beards should run.
Ever.
Unless they are being chased by a bear. A big one.
I keep seeing men clad in lycra or baggy shorts barrelling past me on the footpath, their epic beards rippling in the the breeze, the grizzled hair tossed carelessly over the shoulder, small balls of sweat sliding down and flicking wetly onto the ground.
Their arms swing, their breaths are breathed, the rubbery slap of their sneakers dulled by passing traffic.
It’s like they don’t even know they have beards.
A beard need not, nay should not, be troubled by exercise.
An epic beard is a magnificent thing. And strangely, often coloured completely differently to the hair on a man’s head. It highlights the cheeks and turns eyes twinkly automatically. It broadens the shoulders, straightens the back, gives gravitas. They invite big hugs and loud guffaws. They are reassuring to babies and old people, balance out a motorcycle or a horse. Give credibility to smart cars.
A neatly trimmed beard alludes to precision, to detail. Neatly trimmed beards speak of intellectual thought or spiritual leanings. They whisper of things you wouldn’t understand and emotional distance. They may perch above a bicycle with serious intent and a hidden doping problem but they don’t sign up for marathons because they are solving algorithms or making movies that transform the cinematic experience.
A hipster beard shaped with nods to yesteryear, rampant mutton chops or waxed tipped moustaches, speaks of stringed music, and tour buses, fashion shoots and lolling on tree branches above billabongs playing on smart devices without a hint of irony. They talk rapidly of tweed musters, penny-farthings and music festivals. They may dance, but they would never ever run.
Which is surely the point of a beard. Whether you grow one in defiance of grooming or as an act of masculinity or because it’s more convenient than wearing a napkin tucked into a white shirt, there is no longer any need to run. You win at life.
When people with beards run they change the shape of the universe. They upset the natural order of things. They take away the earnestness of exercise, the cult of self flagellation in pursuit of physical perfection.
When people with beards run they are basically laughing at the rest of us, showing up our vanities and manic obsessions with sweat for sweat’s sake.
And because of the beard, we can’t even fucking tell.
Bastards.
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