Only in New York

by Lily Brett

  Chelsea looked pretty happy when she made the announcement. But no one much was looking at Chelsea or talking about Chelsea.

  Some people addressed their comments directly to the baby. They were mostly extreme right-wingers, violently opposed to abortion rights, who rushed to make the point that Chelsea had admitted she was pregnant with a child and not with a foetus or a bunch of cells. A strange reaction to someone who has just said she is very happy to be expecting a child.

  The New York Post outdid itself by publishing a stomach-churning letter to the baby, which it addressed as ‘foetus’, in a point designed to delight the rabid, anti-abortion advocates. The headline in the New York Post was ‘An Open Letter to Chelsea Clinton’s Foetus’.

  There was some speculation in other media outlets about whether Chelsea’s baby would, one day, become president. Several correspondents pondered the question of what Chelsea’s baby would think about human rights in China or the situation in Ukraine. I am not sure that either of these issues was currently on the baby’s mind. The baby still had quite a few months of gestation to go before it would be contemplating anything other than itself.

  The focus of the Jewish press was on the baby. The question of the day was whether Chelsea’s baby would be Jewish.

  Orthodox and Conservative Jews require a matrilineal descent in order for a child to be considered Jewish. It is one of the few times, in Orthodox Judaism, that the woman has all the power. Chelsea is definitely not Jewish. Her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, is.

  The Brooklyn-based orthodox newspaper the Jewish Press declared, ‘Chelsea Clinton Pregnant With Non-Jewish Child’. Reform and Reconstructionist Jews are much more flexible. They will recognise a baby as Jewish if the baby has had a Jewish upbringing. I am all for religious flexibility. But what does a Jewish upbringing mean? Does it mean attending synagogue? Bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs? Or does it just mean being part of a family that talks a lot and worries a lot?

  But most of the focus was not on the baby. It was on Hillary. Suddenly, Hillary was, again, breaking new ground. She was being hailed as soon becoming the most prominent American politician ever to become a grandmother. Why was this a category? Hundreds of American politicians in office and running for office have been grandfathers. They are not ranked or categorised. They are not even counted. No one cares about them. Not as grandfathers, anyway.

  But a grandmother is apparently something altogether different. A different universe. Most of the speculation about Hillary as a grandmother was wild and intense. You would have thought it was Hillary who was pregnant. The talk was not about how Chelsea’s pregnancy would affect Chelsea. The talk was all about how Chelsea’s pregnancy would affect Hillary.

  When George W. Bush became a grandfather, the big news was all about the baby. Not George. There were many celebratory photographs and articles. George was already out of office when his grandchild arrived, but I know the reaction would have been the same if he had still been in power or running for office. No one would have questioned his ability to focus any more than they already did.

  George W. Bush’s younger brother Jeb, a former governor of Texas, is currently rumoured to be contemplating a run for president in 2016. He is a grandfather. No one has discussed how being a grandfather could affect him. Nor have they mentioned Jeb Bush’s age. Jeb Bush is only a few years younger than Hillary.

  Hillary’s age has been at the forefront of the anti-Hillary movement. There have been endless declarations that Hillary, at sixty-seven, is too old. Men of sixty-seven, it seems, are not too old. The moment that Hillary became a grandmother-to-be, chatter about her age dramatically escalated.

  In the days following the announcement of Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy, the word grandmother was never typed simultaneously by so many people. The word flew off keyboards on to computer, smart phone and tablet screens and newspapers and magazines.

  Grandmother. It is such an ageing term. Grandmother sounds so old. Grandfather sounds just grand. The grand in grandfather doesn’t, on the whole, carry connotations of elderly, stooped or a bit stupid. I am a grandmother. I don’t feel old. I am not stooped and I am not any more stupid that I have ever been.

  I am a grandmother but rarely refer to myself as a grandmother. I talk about my children’s children. Not my grandchildren. Somehow it seems less generic, less possessive.

  New York is not a city in which people are overly focused on whether or not you have grandchildren. I don’t think I have ever been asked if I have grandchildren. I have also rarely been asked if I have children. New Yorkers are much more focused on who you are rather than whom you have mothered.

  I talk about my children and their children. Not incessantly. But I do talk about them. And I love them with a passion. I just don’t like the word grandmother. I wanted my children’s children to call me Lily. My children have always called me Lily or Lil, which is less attractive to me. But my children insisted that I be called Nana by their children. Nana is what my children called my mother.

  My children won. Their children call me Nana. And it sounds fine. But grandmother doesn’t.

  Hillary Clinton, a woman of enormous accomplishment and, arguably, the most famous and admired woman in the world, now seems to have the word grandmother glued to her. And in a less than attractive context.

  Unlike grandmother, the word grandfather doesn’t seem to provoke the same sense of decline or slurs. Grandfather of eight. Grandfather of ten. Statements like that seem to elicit the sort of applause and admiration that suggest virility. As though the man in question has fathered the grandchildren himself.

  Men are allowed to be grandfathers without losing their dignity or being deemed decrepit. It is harder if you are a grandmother. Between them my children have eight children. Eight beautiful children. I am a grandmother of eight.

  On the few occasions I have mentioned this, people have looked at me as though I have changed. And not for the better. They look at me as though I have morphed into someone else. As though I am no longer a writer or the interesting neighbour or acquaintance they thought I was.

  Although I rarely refer to myself as a grandmother, having grandchildren is a lot of fun. I hope Hillary will be a grandmother multiple times. The White House has enough room to accommodate a lot of grandchildren.

  Late in life, and relatively recently, I began learning about the animal world. I learned everything I know about the animal world from a three-year-old. He talked about mammals, primates, reptiles, rodents and marsupials. He mentioned girdle-tailed lizards and Gila monsters.

  He told me about a salamander in his garden. I didn’t know what a salamander was. I didn’t know they were amphibians and are born in water. They have gills and then develop lungs so they can live on land. I didn’t know that salamanders are always hungry and devour ants and flies and beetle larvae. That is a lot of information to absorb.

  Before this I couldn’t have told you the difference between a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros or a skunk and a squirrel. My teacher is a particularly clever three-year-old and I am clearly not a very clever adult when it comes to animals.

  I am the same about cars. I am not at all smart about cars. They all look the same to me. If I am told by a car service that I will be picked up by a black Toyota Avalon, I just look for a black car. We own an old car. It is white. I have often tried to unlock someone else’s white car.

  In New York, you don’t really need to know a lot about cars or animals. Inevitably, and almost always inadvertently, you pick up bits and pieces of information. ‘There is a real rise in small-pet ownership in New York,’ a neighbour who lives two buildings away said to me. ‘A lot of people have rats and chinchillas and frogs and crabs as pets.’

  I had asked after her husband, who had fallen and broken his arm. I didn’t want to seem overly concerned about her husband, so I didn’t say anything. ‘Don’t get a chinchilla,’ she said. ‘They are nocturnal and like to throw their poop out of their cages.’

  If I had ev
er entertained any thoughts of owning a chinchilla, this would definitely have put me off. But I hadn’t. I didn’t even know what a chinchilla was. I thought it was best not to mention my ignorance about chinchillas. ‘I am not really a pet person,’ I said.

  She didn’t seem to have heard me. ‘A lot of people are getting rabbits,’ she said. I quite like rabbits. I fell in love with a very droopy-eared rabbit that lived in the window of a small clothing store on Prince Street. I used to visit him regularly. And then one day, the store closed. No one could tell me what had happened to the rabbit.

  ‘You would have to have a rabbit-proofed apartment to own a rabbit as rabbits need at least four hours of out-of-cage playing time a day,’ my neighbour said. I have not contemplated owning a rabbit since I was about seven or eight. I don’t know why she is warning me against rabbit ownership. ‘Rabbits are prone to a lot of gastrointestinal problems,’ she said, ‘so you would have to find a small-pet vet.’

  A small-pet vet? I had to extricate myself from this conversation. I did, but not before I learned about the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society, which finds homes for lost or discarded turtles, and the House Rabbit Society from which you can adopt a rabbit. I also learned that the city has several rat-owner groups who meet regularly, and that there are quite a few reptile-owner clubs. This information did not add to the allure of the city.

  All of the talk about pets made me realise just how many pet-supplies stores there are in New York. If you walk around the city you could easily think that New Yorkers do nothing but think about their pets. There are pet stores everywhere. Pet stores with names like Parrots and Pups, Unleashed, Pet Central, The Barking Zoo, Le Petit Puppy Puppy and Whiskers Holistic Pet Care.

  Whiskers has a list of holistic veterinarians and a holistic veterinarian acupuncturist. For those pet owners who don’t want to see a medically trained veterinarian or veterinarian acupuncturist, Whiskers has a list of alternative practitioners. What would alternative practitioners for pets be? Hypnotists? Yoga teachers? Psychoanalysts?

  One of the pet stores was taking orders for anxiety-reducing shirts for dogs. The shirts apparently soothe and calm dogs in the same way that swaddling soothes babies. Today’s dogs, a pet-store salesperson told me, were experiencing more anxiety. They experience separation anxiety and can get very upset by traffic noises or thunderstorms, he said. The store also sold dietary supplements for pets that suffer from nervous disorders.

  New York City is the safest big city in the US, Mayor Bloomberg told New Yorkers in late 2013. Since 1990, the city has seen a dramatic drop in crime. Last year the homicide rate in in New York was the lowest in more than fifty years. The streets are clean, children play in the parks, the city is well patrolled. So why are the dogs more anxious?

  I guess there is still a lot to be stressed about. I could do with some anxiety-reducing clothes myself, wherever I lived. If only they made anxiety-reducing shirts and dresses and trousers and shorts. Not that I wear shorts. Everybody else in America does.

  As soon as the temperature hits seventy degrees, there is a mass migration of shorts from their drawers and cupboards to the bodies of assorted shorts-owners. It is as regular and predictable as the flight of the monarch butterflies who leave the US for Mexico, in October, every year.

  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a pair of shorts. Except me. I don’t understand the need to bare your legs, but then I have never had legs that were really worth baring. Shorts are just not for me. I’d have to be heavily sedated just to try on a pair, let alone leave the house sporting shorts.

  Frankly, I am not sure that shorts are all that much cooler than a dress. When I first moved to New York, I used to be quite intolerant of the odd-shaped people who wore shorts. Now I admire them. I have a great admiration for people who don’t think twice about pulling on a pair of shorts and walking down Fifth Avenue.

  I am far too self-conscious. I would love to be more casual, more relaxed. I was wondering whether I could possibly contemplate wearing a pair of long shorts, below the knee, when I spotted a dog in shorts on West 3rd Street. I had to look twice. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I have seen dogs in skirts and that looks absurd enough, but a dog in shorts?

  The shorts were particularly short and perky and were being worn by a small bulldog. I don’t think bulldogs were meant to wear shorts. They are not particularly dainty dogs. The shorts were a maroon and yellow paisley. I usually like all paisleys. But not in shorts. On dogs.

  Why on earth would you put shorts on your dog? How would it pee? Would you have to take off the shorts every time the dog wanted to relieve himself or just leave his mark on a tree or lamppost or sidewalk?

  I walked home. I saw my neighbour who lives two buildings away. I almost asked her to tell me what a chinchilla was, but I didn’t. I ducked into my building instead.

  My husband has been amused by my new interest in animals. He told me a story about how his uncle, who had served in the Royal Navy and in the Royal Australian Navy, had told him that when camels get thirsty, their humps go flat.

  ‘I never knew that,’ I said. It seemed perfectly plausible.

  My husband looked at me strangely. ‘It wasn’t true,’ he said. ‘Camels’ humps don’t go flat.’ I considered saying that of course I knew that. But my husband knows me too well. He had already started laughing.

  ‘Camels store their body fat in their humps,’ he said. ‘They can store up to eighty pounds of fat in their humps.’ I was bowled over. What a smart use of excess body fat. You could eat whatever you wanted and walk around proudly displaying your elegant humps instead of holding in your stomach and wearing hip-clenching and thigh-firming pantyhose.

  ‘Are they born with humps?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Baby camels don’t get their humps until they start eating solids.’

  I was really impressed. How many people would know that? My husband is one very smart man.

  New Yorkers talk about going to the beach in the same over-excited manner that small children do. New Yorkers don’t jump and down, but they probably would if it were more socially acceptable.

  When you live in a dense, noisy, crowded, urban, high-rise environment, the beach seems almost mythological. New Yorkers dream about the beach, especially in summer. Quiet, gentle waves. Sand. Endless water.

  It took me years to know that going to the beach had anything to do with being close to the water. My parents only ever went to the beach when the heat became so oppressive that staying in the small, three-room cottage we sometimes shared with another family became impossible.

  My father worked double shifts in a factory and we usually set off for the beach when he came home, in the late afternoon or early evening. My mother always packed for our outings to the beach. She packed food. Usually peeled cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, cream cheese, a loaf of rye bread and oranges, with the peel already scored in quarters and, if we were lucky, some dark-red cherries. She also packed two blankets and two bottles filled with tap water. I would feel giddy with excitement when I saw my mother start packing for the beach.

  Going to the beach was a whole adventure. It started with a walk to the tram stop and a 45-minute tram ride from the working-class, inner-city suburb of North Carlton, where we lived. We boarded the tram armed with our blankets and food and drink.

  I loved being on the tram. It was so predictable. You sat down, the conductor came around, you paid your fare and he handed you a brightly coloured ticket in return. It was all so normal. And so much of our life was anything but normal. Seven years earlier, both of my parents were still imprisoned in Nazi death camps. Death camps where almost everyone they loved had been murdered.

  When we arrived at the beach my mother set us up in the treed, scrubby area that preceded the water. We really needed the blankets, as the ground was rough and littered with twigs and broken branches. There were always other people with blankets and food already there. They were mostly Jews. The Italians and Maltese
and Greeks and other migrants, who were also part of the large post-World War II migration to Australia, must have had a different meeting place.

  As soon as I sat down on the blanket, I felt happy. I loved being surrounded by families. To me, it always felt like a party. It took away some of the loneliness of growing up with dead grandparents, dead aunts, and dead uncles. It took away the loneliness of growing up with cousins who would never be born.

  I sat on my blanket eating hard-boiled eggs and listening to the adults talking. I know there were other children sitting on other blankets. Other children who were almost all children of survivors of death camps or labour camps. But I have no memory of myself or any of the other children running around. On the whole, we were quiet and pale. A pallor hung over us. The pallor of living too close to death.

  Sometimes, a man came around selling bags of unshelled peanuts from a box that hung from a band around his neck. If I was very lucky, my father would buy me a bag of peanuts. And if I was luckier than lucky, an ice-cream vendor, with small cartons of ice-cream sitting on top of a mound of ice, would turn up and my father would, despite my mother’s protests, buy me an ice-cream.

  I was in heaven. I was so happy. Even my mother, whose anguish clung to her like a tight gown, looked more at ease sitting on her blanket and feeling the breeze.

  Years later, I realised how close we were to the water. And what a lot of water there was. We were at the seaside. There was water everywhere. Somehow, it didn’t feel strange that it hadn’t occurred to any one of us to go into the water or even think about swimming. We were there, on our blankets, under the trees in the middle of the dry scrub. We were there for the relief from the heat and for a small respite from the fear.

  HAMISH HAMILTON