The following year was therefore also a blur as we sat on bigger bits of wood to allow Dad to build a bigger boat. And when it was finished, in a wonderful gesture of appreciation, Dad named the boat by taking the first letter of all of his offspring’s names, and thus we launched the LKEGDOLIPLM.
And we celebrated its completion by donating our entire two-week school holiday to towing the boat on the back of the Valiant to a lake in the middle of the state, on a journey that my mother had dreamt of since 1967. Unfortunately, however, unbeknown to us drought had kicked in during the time that had passed between my mother planning this holiday in 1967 and us taking the holiday in 1974, and by the time we arrived at our destination the lake had completely evaporated. We nevertheless all slept in the boat by night and sat in the boat by day for the rest of the holiday while the boat remained attached to a trailer on the back of the Valiant in the car park.
My sisters and brothers may dispute this story, and they have every right to. It is possible that I have recalled those years incorrectly as I wore Mum-made earmuffs constructed out of socks to keep my head warm whenever we went sailing and I was often hit in the head by the boom because I didn’t hear Dad yell, ‘Going about.’
My family doesn’t talk about this incident either. I mean, no doubt someone did discuss it on the boat at the time, but only in the same impotent way that most families, particularly mothers and grandmothers, idly sit by and discuss their children’s approach to imminent catastrophes without actually doing anything to prevent them from occurring.
‘If she gets too close to the heater, she’s going to shoot up in flames.’
‘If she keeps walking with that spoon in her mouth, she’s going to trip over and stab herself in the oesophagus and then we’ll all have to get in the Valiant and rush her off to hospital and the entire day will be ruined.’
‘If she doesn’t stop sitting like that with those earmuffs on, she’s going to get hit in the head with the boom when we go about …’
‘Ooph! See, I told you so!’
I wonder whether being hit on the head repeatedly with a boom has anything to do with the ache in my heart. Maybe it hasn’t been an ache in the heart at all. Maybe it’s actually an ache in my head and could have been cured long, long ago by the simple act of swallowing two painkillers and having a good lie down.
4
‘Is everything all right, Mama?’
‘Yes, Frog, darling. Don’t worry about the look on my face. Mummy’s just thinking about our future.’
‘I’m not talking about the look on your face, Mum. There’s just this kind of huge sag in the back of your jeans and it looks like you’ve pooed in your pants.’
Tired and Insane
Remember it is possible that I’ve blurred the lines between truth and hallucination somewhat over time, in particular over the past twenty years, which I’ve spent as a ‘sole provider/single mother’ (otherwise known as a Tired and Insane Person Who Shouldn’t be Permitted to Either Drive, Work Heavy Machinery or Make Major Decisions, and Yet is Responsible for the Lives of Two Minors).
While twenty years of coordinating three people’s lives has made me capable of organising all military movements throughout the world, while also doing the troops’ ironing and cooking and putting bandaids on their wounds, it has similarly made me somewhat scatterbrained due to sleeplessness, anxiety and a diet of ‘burnt yuk’. As my children grow older we’re emerging from that chapter of exhaustion but I must confess that while I still carry the beauty of those years in my heart, it would also appear that I have quite a lot of irreparable scar tissue in my brain causing me to do things like confuse the microwave with a television set and inadvertently starch my shirts with fly spray.
While these practices are not completely desirable, they’re an improvement on some of the things I used to do in the ‘eye of mother cyclone’, such as put the kids in the dishwasher and drive the plates to school.
Diary of a Madwoman
It’s not surprising really. Twenty years of utter madness, 24/7 for 365 days a year, will of course take its toll. And as ‘Exhibit A’ I would like to submit as evidence a day’s diary entries written in about May 1999, a typical day in our family home as my kids were growing up.
5.30 a.m.
I wake at five-thirty in preparation for the alarm waking me at six. I have purposely programmed myself to wake before the alarm, because I hate being woken by an alarm.
5.31 a.m.
I’m exhausted from lack of sleep. I went to bed well after midnight after completing my son’s school project of ‘Remaking a Harp Seal’. The original project was just ‘Make a Harp Seal’, which my son and I did two days ago, using two buttons and a sock. But after submitting it for marking yesterday my son’s teacher told him that he had to remake the harp seal because it didn’t look like a harp seal at all and just looked like two buttons and a sock. With our pride at stake we have since tried every possible previously unimagined alternative combination of craft products, including some of the neighbour’s dog hair from their couch. But when my son went to sleep it occurred to me that ‘we’ could bake a cake that looked like a harp seal. I spent hours and hours and hours on the cake and I will tell my son this morning that ‘we’ve’ done a great job, but the truth of the matter is that unfortunately I genuinely think I’ve managed to make a cake that looks like two buttons and a sock. (I know the finished product isn’t good enough but my only alternative at this late stage is finding a real harp seal, killing it, gutting it and stuffing it with the aforementioned sock … the pursuit of which would be a little ironic considering the purpose of the project was to teach children the evil things that humans do to harp seals.)
6.00 a.m.
I go to the laundry to begin the day’s washing only to discover that somehow, overnight, the pile of washing has grown. It’s hitting the laundry ceiling and I wonder what will happen if I don’t do something about it. I wonder whether the pile will grow through the roof, into the sky, up through the clouds, higher and higher until it ultimately hides the sun and as a consequence all the plants and animals on earth die! I wonder whether that’s what happened to the dinosaurs.
6.05 a.m.
The washing machine doesn’t turn on. I wonder what to do. It’s too early to ring the repairman so I spend fifteen minutes doing nothing more than repeatedly pressing the on/off button, and then, when it still doesn’t work, wondering whether I should just throw the washing out.
6.30 a.m.
I make the school lunches. I do not include anything that the kids might like to eat because they only want to eat unhealthy things and my lunchbox preparation is all about impressing the teacher on playground duty with a healthy lunchbox so she thinks that I’m a really good mother.
6.35 a.m.
I finish making the lunches. I wonder whether I should really be calling them ‘lunches’ if no one is actually going to lunch on them. I wonder whether I should just refer to them in future as ‘sculptures’.
6.35 ½ a.m.
I start to iron my children’s uniforms. I get distracted by my own brain and burn a shiny silver mark on the front of my daughter Tadpole’s dark-blue tunic. I remove the shiny silver mark by colouring it in with a dark-blue Texta.
6.37 a.m.
Having repaired the damage, I get back to ironing Frog’s school uniform. I’m pleased with myself and begin to hum. I look at my reflection in the window as I work and accidentally iron my own arm.
6.40 a.m.
I eat some toast and make some tea and then I clean my teeth.
I accidentally clean my teeth with hair removal cream because it comes in a similar tube to our toothpaste and has been left on the bathroom basin. Despite being eleven and having no sign of any facial hair whatsoever, Frog’s been using the hair removal cream presumably because he’s either too scared to shave or has lived for so long with only females that he thinks all sexes remove excess body hair with depilatory cream. I feel a little guilty that h
e doesn’t have a male role model and a little relieved that he hasn’t resorted to waxing.
6.49 a.m.
I take a shower. I clean the shower as I shower and when I’ve done this I do my hand washing … in the shower.
6.55 a.m.
As I get out of the shower, Tadpole rings me on my mobile from her bedroom, which is approximately three metres from the bathroom. She has rung to complain that I’ve woken her with my shower.
6.55 ½ a.m.
I turn off the shower. The twelve-second phone call has made me run late. My morning panic hasn’t allowed for an interruption like this, as I’d only allowed for the usual broken domestic appliance, burnt breakfast and school uniform renovation. Should my mother ring right now, it would be a disaster, because whenever she rings and I say, ‘Sorry, I can’t talk right now,’ she then wants to spend half an hour talking about why I can’t talk.
6.56 a.m.
I rummage through my clothes. They’re all too old to be fashionable and too young to be vintage. I don’t have time to make an effort. I console myself with the fact that when I actually really do make an effort, my kids tell me that I look like a ‘try-hard’.
6.57 a.m.
I don’t have time to put on any makeup. Actually, who am I kidding? I don’t wear makeup! I can’t because I’ve never really known how to apply it without looking like a 500-year-old drag queen.
6.58 a.m.
As I slip into my comfortable (i.e. ugly) jeans and shirt, I wonder whether I’ll ever again find myself invited somewhere that requires me to wear a ball gown. (At the moment the only evening wear I own is a flannelette nightie.)
7.00 a.m.
I don’t go to wake Tadpole because she’s just rung me to tell me that she’s awake. I don’t go to wake Frog just yet, because he takes less time to get ready in the morning (four seconds compared to Tadpole’s hour and a half).
7.02 a.m.
The washing machine makes a screeching sound. I interpret it as a cry for help because I make the same noise in my moments of need. I ring the washing machine repairman and he says that he will come out within the hour. I am thrilled to bits and can’t believe it. Normally as a mark of professionalism repairmen don’t say they’ll arrive ‘within the hour’ and instead give an expected arrival time ‘somewhere between seven a.m. and six p.m. some time this year’ and assume you’ll just stay at home until they choose to turn up.
7.11 a.m.
The washing machine repairman rings back. He says sorry, he wasn’t thinking clearly because he’d just been electrocuted on an earlier job. So he was ringing me now to let me know that he’s still very happy to come and fix our washing machine but would like to change his expected arrival time to somewhere between seven a.m. and six p.m. some time later this year.
7.11 ½ a.m.
I hang up and decide to ring back when I have thought of a good reply.
7.33 a.m.
I can’t think of a good reply.
7.34 a.m.
I can’t think of a good reply because Tadpole has been standing in front of me since halfway through the phone conversation and I find this somewhat distracting. In fact, she hasn’t just been standing in front of me since halfway through my phone conversation, she’s been standing in front of me and talking to me since halfway through my phone conversation. She was apparently unaware that I was on the phone despite the fact that I was holding a telephone to the side of my head and talking into it.
And she continued to speak to me until I made a face like a gargoyle and then she stopped actually speaking and instead started miming and grimacing. But she doesn’t do it from a distance like you might do in charades … oh, no! She mimes and mouths and grimaces an inch from my face, and I’m trying to work out what to say to the repairman who’s just been electrocuted, while at the same time wondering whether my daughter has rabies.
7.39 a.m.
I take a moment to realise that: one, no matter what I do I will have to wait for as long as the repairman wants me to wait; and two, Tadpole is angry with me for not waking her up even though we both knew she was already lying there wide awake.
7.42 a.m.
When I get off the phone, I wonder why it is that you can try to converse with your kids all day every day but they will only ever really want to talk to you when you are on the phone.
7.43 a.m.
When I get off the phone I also realise that Tadpole has pulled the scab off her knee and is taking it to school for Show and Tell. Things could be worse. Last week a girl we know took a photo of her mother to Show and Tell and told the class that her mum was trying to kill her.
7.46 a.m.
At seven forty-five, while Tadpole is still walking around the house nude, wearing only her school socks and shoes, I go to wake Frog. I find him kind of half awake and half asleep in what appears to be some sort of coma where he can still talk. He says his throat hurts, his ears hurt, his nose is blocked and his neck is sore and he can’t possibly go to school. I try everything. I serve him hot water, lemon and honey, massage his neck, and then sing a get-well song that I used to sing to him when he was four, called ‘Why Do I Feel Like Snot?’
7.51 a.m.
When I’ve finished the dance that accompanies the snot song, I suggest it might be time for Frog to have a shower and get into his school uniform, but he says he can’t move. I ask whether he’ll miss out on anything important today if he doesn’t go to school and he says he can’t remember. I ask him to ring his smartest friend to see what’s on at school today. His smartest friend suggests Frog might have meningitis and be dying. Frog then hangs up and asks me what the symptoms for meningitis are.
I look up meningitis on the internet, read the symptoms aloud to Frog, and one by one he develops them to such a degree that even I become convinced he has the illness.
7.55 a.m.
So Tadpole goes to school but Frog stays home, which means that I can’t go to work. I ring the doctor to make an appointment for Frog but we can’t get in until Wednesday of next week, by which time I assume Frog will be better, and Frog assumes he will be dead. We ring another number to arrange for a locum to visit. He arrives, and declares he can’t find a problem. Frog assumes this means he’s fine. I assume this means the locum is an idiot.
Midday
By lunchtime Frog is well enough to lift his head from the pillow and request that I drive to the shop to buy him two meat pies. I buy him the pies, he eats them and then spends the entire afternoon sitting on the couch, watching television and waiting for his sister to come home so he can tease her about the fact that she’s had to go to school today.
4.00 p.m.
When Tadpole comes home Frog teases her and laughs so hard that he vomits up the two meat pies.
4.03 p.m.
Once in the door Tadpole announces two things. One, that she has a blocked nose, and two, that she’d like some afternoon tea. I tell her not to consume dairy products in case she’s getting a cold, so she attempts to eat a bowl of dry Weet-Bix. The dry Weet-Bix forms a mortar-like paste in her mouth which she can neither spit out nor swallow and this, combined with her blocked nose, means that she nearly dies of suffocation.
4.16 p.m.
The bathroom smells of vomited meat pie so I clean it up and spray it with Forest Glade air freshener. I realise as I smell the forest glade scent that the next time I’m in a forest I’m going to think that the forest smells like a toilet where someone has just vomited up two meat pies.
4.43 p.m.
Frog starts to feel better. I know this because he now has enough energy to hit Tadpole for saying that he smells.
4.44 p.m.
Frog does smell a bit. I try to discuss the issue with Frog but he’s ignoring me. I gather from this he’s still a little upset that I suggested yesterday that it might be time to start spraying deodorant under his arms as opposed to his current method of application, which involves just spraying the deodorant on his clothes.
4.48
p.m.
In reply Frog announces that he needs fresh air, then Tadpole says we all do because Frog smells so much, and I tell Frog that if he’s going for a walk could he please stop at the corner shop to buy some tea bags.
5.23 p.m.
Frog returns from his walk empty-handed because he misheard me when I requested tea bags and thought that I’d said Tampax … which are apparently ‘too gross’ to buy.
5.25 p.m.
Thrilled to bits that Frog is kind of in trouble, Tadpole decides to seize any available attention for herself and announces that she has a form for a school excursion where they will be going skiing for a week and ‘all I have to do’ is sign it and give her a cheque for $500. I can’t believe the luxury of it all. The only overnight school excursion I ever went on was the result of the class teacher misjudging closing time at the reptile museum.
5.26 p.m.
Having received the cheque and currently guarding it closely in her hot little hand, Tadpole now feels free to announce that she received a detention at school today for ‘having a smart-arse look on her face’. I ask her to show me the smart-arse look and suddenly Frog screams, ‘Oh, my God! You look exactly like Mum!’
The Night my Bum Dropped Page 8