Alphabet Soup

by Melissa Doyle

  Sometimes you also have to know when to manage something on your own.

  Autographs

  At the age of seven, my daughter assumed that cooking extraordinaire Donna Hay was my best friend. She’s a great woman and an awesome cook and I’d be lucky to call her a friend, but Talia thinks because Donna gave me a copy of her magazine every time she came on Sunrise that we must be close.

  Just slowly they are waking to the realities, and advantages, of Mummy’s job.

  In fact, drawing the line between who really knows their mum and who recognises her from the telly has taken a bit of explaining.

  There have been times when I’ve discreetly capitalised on meeting some of their favourite celebs . . . and come home with autographs from Katy Perry or Brett Lee.

  But I’ve also put as much energy into teaching them that, for Mummy, it’s just a job. No more or less important than Daddy’s or anyone else’s. Luckily, two of our neighbours are doctors and another is a fireman. These people, I tell my kids, really are saving the world.

  It’s an odd thing having a job where some people know who I am and what I do before I have had the chance to say hello. It leaves me little to share at the school reunion and not much privacy in the gym change rooms. But it also makes me feel incredibly privileged and lucky to have so many friends, people who have welcomed me into their lives without actually having met me. They say hello with such familiarity that I have to do a quick mental check to make sure I don’t actually know them.

  My kids weren’t always so happy about Mummy’s profile. After a friendly chat with someone in a shop and then explaining to my son that no, in fact I didn’t really know that person, the ‘don’t talk to strangers’ lecture becomes a little hypocritical.

  And occasionally it can be uncomfortable. Like the sales lady who followed me into a lingerie change room: me carrying a load of bras to try on, her carrying a pen and paper dictating the message she wanted me to write to her daughter. Or the girls who once followed me into a toilet cubicle and seemed quite shocked when I politely asked if they could wait outside.

  There was the mum I met at mothers’ group who swore she recognised me from somewhere. She insisted I didn’t tell her as she tried to guess, then felt so relieved when she remembered she saw me all the time at our local Coles supermarket.

  I’ve had moments in a doctor’s surgery waiting room when I’ve spied myself on a magazine and hastily shoved it to the bottom of the pile, blushing. Once Talia was confronted with a family portrait while cutting up a magazine for a class project.

  The kids laughed when they saw their mother on the back of a bus. My husband made a predictable gag, and I quickly changed lanes.

  Nick is pretty quiet about what his mum does. Most of his classmates are still in the dark and he wants to keep it that way. Probably why they want me to collect them at the ‘kiss and drop’ zone nowadays is to avoid any embarrassing moments.

  My daughter is a little more vocal but maybe because at her age she just sees the glamour. When I went to London in 2011 to cover the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, she asked me to wave to the bride and take plenty of photos. I’m still trying to teach her the difference between covering an event like that and attending one.

  Maybe I’ll get Donna over to cook a meal and she can explain it.

  Baby Zone

  Nothing makes me cluckier than seeing a pregnant belly. Friends, colleagues, strangers . . . it’s enough to make me want to join them. I find myself breaking all codes of etiquette and reaching out to touch their lovely rounded tummies. And the sight or smell of a newborn baby just tugs at my heart.

  But before you go jumping to conclusions (or Mum, you read this and get excited), the answer is no. We have given away the cot and pram and never again will I buy a box of nappies—well, not until I’m a grandmother at least.

  Once our youngest started school, I knew the dangers of empty-house-let’s-have-another-baby territory, but I resisted. Instead we got a dog.

  The thought of sore breasts, pacing the hallway at midnight with a crying newborn and once again lugging a four-kilogram nappy bag everywhere we went negated any cute images of a soft little baby. That chapter is long gone and the thought of going there again is just way too hard. Too much time has passed and too many changes to our lives have been made.

  We had just over two and a half years between children, purely because it took us that long to decide we were ready to do it all again. And the gap suited us. When Talia arrived, Nick was almost out of nappies. The cot was free, and he moved into the toddler seat on the pram. He could dress himself, feed himself and watch The Wiggles while I fed his baby sister. And all of that suited me. I was still in the baby mindset, but the older one was slightly more independent.

  On the other hand, my girlfriend had a much smaller gap, and consequently two babies within eighteen months. She hated pregnancy—had morning sickness all day for nine months—so she decided after the first go that it was immediately or never.

  I was lucky in that I loved being pregnant. I packed on the weight, but otherwise enjoyed every moment.

  We didn’t find out the sex of either baby. I wanted a surprise after all that hard work. I thought I had an inkling, but I was wrong both times! Pregnant with Nicholas, I found myself wanting to wear pink after avoiding it for twenty years. I felt so feminine that I was sure I was carrying a girl. Carrying Talia, I felt equally certain. I put on the same amount of weight, craved the same foods and all but painted the room blue. Wrong again!

  It’s a cliché, but it’s true: you don’t mind what sex it is, as long as the baby’s healthy. Your teenage fantasies about family dynamics no longer matter when you are finally carrying your own child. The pregnancy hormone kicks in and protecting your baby is all that matters.

  The baby zone really is all-consuming. When you’re in it, it’s all you talk about. You are resigned to years of mopping up vomit and getting excited when bulk nappies go on sale. The steriliser stays on the kitchen bench and there are packets of sweet smelling baby wipes everywhere you could possibly need them.

  But when you pack away those fiddly jumpsuits and stop mashing vegetables, life changes dramatically. The next chapter brings with it little people who can order in a restaurant and carry their own library cards.

  So we culled the Fisher-Price toys and took the child safety locks off the cupboards. And suddenly babies and all that comes with them seemed so very long ago.

  John and I had five years of marriage, ten years to make inroads in the workforce and a lot of carefree years with minimal responsibility before we decided to start a family.

  Luckily for us, Mother Nature agreed with our timetable and we didn’t have to wait too long . . . but ask the grandparents and they’ll tell you they’d been waiting forever!

  When to start a family can be a challenging question for a lot of couples. Often the decision is not yours entirely, and quite frankly there is never a perfect time.

  I found out I was pregnant the very week I got the career break of a lifetime. Professionally the timing could not have been worse. But personally I was over the moon.

  I had my son at 31 and my daughter at 33. I had faith that I’d worked hard enough for long enough to take maternity leave and not lose my place on my career path. But John and I also realised how much we wanted children and if that meant sacrificing some elements of our career, then so be it.

  Such a personal decision as having a family can become a very public discussion point. Barely had we made it home from hospital with number one than the questions started on whether we were having another.

  Having the ‘pigeon pair’, as everyone put it, seemed to silence the interrogation a little, as though having one of each was a tidy conclusion to my breeding program, but many people still thought it ok to ask about number three when we hadn’t even made such a decision.

  Luckily, by the time I turned 40 that chatter had eased considerably.

  It does
make me wonder though how tough it must be for people to manage the questions if they can’t have children or simply don’t want to.

  You’d never point-blank ask someone how much they earn, who they voted for at the last election or if their diamonds are real, so why is something as personal as having babies a free-for-all?

  I have a friend who found herself at the right age but without the right man. So she headed overseas, found a suitable donor, and came home to give birth to her adored baby girl. Another friend met the man, got engaged, fell pregnant, then they split before they made it to the altar. Both women are loving being single mothers.

  Most women do it when the time is right for them. They’ve met the right person, or they’ve waited long enough and decided to go it alone, or the time is right in their career. However, sometimes nature simply doesn’t respond when we decide tonight’s the night.

  So enough with the guilt, the judgement and the questions. Whether we’re ‘too young’ or ‘too old’ to be having children, have a natural or caesarean birth, breast- or bottle-feed, return to work or don’t—the noisy commentary that surrounds women’s choices in motherhood is relentless. We are all so different, as are our families, our circumstances and the way we parent. And thank goodness.

  Personally, I can visit my friends and their babies, buy them cute baby clothes and breathe in that newborn smell. But too much time has passed for me to cross into the baby zone again.

  Sorry, Mum.

  Bana-meter

  It’s one thing to meet all the new class mums at the beginning of a school year, zero in on the like-minded ones and quickly develop some sort of rapport, it’s another thing to sit on a couch opposite a Hollywood superstar, start a relaxed conversation and try to maintain a professional demeanour when all I really want to do is pinch myself.

  If it’s a movie junket, I’ve got anywhere between four and ten minutes to develop a rapport. I enter what is usually a hotel room, where the bed has been removed and replaced by two chairs facing each other; there’s a bank of soft lighting, two cameras, an entourage, a make-up person and the star—already sitting in the prime position, movie posters strategically hanging behind them. Sometimes they stand to greet me, other times they don’t bother.

  The PR person starts the clock and I’m off and running. Too much time wasted being friendly simply eats into question time; go over and they cut me off and send me packing—incomplete interview in hand.

  A few have used the ‘I caught a cold on the plane’ excuse to avoid shaking hands, others jump up and greet me so warmly I spend the next few minutes quelling a schoolgirl blush. Maybe hitting me with the nice stick is all part of their strategy.

  Granted, it’s an artificial way to get to know someone. I figure celebrities are usually going to be nice to the chick with the camera and the window to their audience. It’s how they greet the make-up team and the crew that I watch most closely. It might be a snapshot, but you can usually get a pretty good understanding if they’re a decent person or not.

  Sometimes it goes really well. In 2006, I flew to LA for Sunrise and scored the first interview with Tom Cruise the day after he became a father to his daughter, Suri. He was promoting Mission Impossible and word came through as we were checking in at Sydney airport that his wife, Katie, had given birth. The movie company said he was cancelling most of his interviews, but we boarded anyway to take our chances. As it turned out, he withdrew from the bulk of his domestic media commitments, but cherrypicked a few internationals. So there I was, waiting patiently in the hallway to be ushered into the hotel room cum studio, when Tom Cruise suddenly rounded the corner. It was a frenzy of cheering, high-fives and congratulatory hugs as he made his way towards me, beaming at the applause he was getting. I was swept into the room on a wave of enthusiasm and so began one of the most incredibly exciting six minutes of my career. Luckily, I had brought some Wiggles gifts from home. He loved them, hugged me at the end, suggested a photo and left me completely starstruck by the whole Hollywood game.

  Other times have not been so successful. I interviewed the cast of The Great Gatsby in 2013 when they came to Sydney to promote the movie. Carey Mulligan had just flown in that morning and chose to be interviewed along with Tobey Maguire. My first question, ‘How proud are you both of this film?’, sent them into fits of giggles. It wasn’t that my question was even funny, but rather something had set them off earlier and clearly once they started they couldn’t stop. But the clock was ticking, so I pushed on. ‘Tobey, tell me how your friendship with Leonardo has evolved over the years?’ Hysterics again. I offered them time out—maybe they’d like a drink or a moment to compose themselves? But no, they wanted to continue, so I kept trying. Each question was met with giggles, and time was running out. A good six of my eight minutes was wasted and the movie studio executive was winding me up. In the end, I hardly got anything and the story became about their delirium.

  Most of my celeb encounters have been on the Sunrise set. Eric Bana was one of the nicest people we ever welcomed. On a measure of modesty, decency and humility, he scored a ten out of ten. So my co-host, David ‘Kochie’ Koch, and I decided he set the bar. We called it the ‘Bana-meter’ and it was the scale by which all celebs were measured.

  Some passed. Some failed.

  Some celebrities do all they can to make us feel relaxed. They clearly know how to handle the media and have us eating out of their palms. Others are plugging a movie or a product and only sit there because it’s in their contract and they clearly would rather be anywhere else.

  Kim Kardashian flew to Australia the day after ending her high-profile 72-day marriage. Painted head to toe in foundation, she kept looking to her entourage off camera for support when we continued to ask about the divorce proceedings. There to sell a range of handbags, she must have assumed Australian media were too far away to know or too insignificant to care about what was happening in her personal life. Either way, we pushed until she stonewalled. She then fled the country that afternoon.

  Kelsey Grammer took such objection to us showing his reality star ex-wife in the set-up story—even though we had run it past his manager—that he rang our producer after the show and ripped into him, almost pushing him to tears.

  Rupert Everett once turned up looking like he’d just got out of bed and clearly didn’t want to be there. And Michael Richards, who came bounding into the studio in a dressing gown, filled us with such certainty that we were in for a fun segment but left us disappointed when he clearly didn’t want to talk about his time on Seinfeld.

  Hollywood stars are the beautiful people of this world. But ironically it was the most beautiful of all (who shall remain nameless) who refused to sit in the usual guest spot on our couch because that wasn’t her ‘good side’. She then spent five minutes adjusting her body position according to where the lighting was and sitting so awkwardly to make her look slim on camera that her stiffness was completely off-putting.

  Then Debbie Reynolds comes along: a Hollywood legend full of so many incredible stories and so willing to share them.

  Katy Perry threw every ounce into her performance and then hung around until she had met and signed autographs for every single fan in the crowd.

  Often the bigger the star, the more gracious the person. They are the ones who set no time limits or restrictions on questions. Music legends Kenny Rogers and Stevie Nicks were open and giving, k.d. Lang gracious and Shirley Jones and David Cassidy both full of stories and happy to share them.

  I had such a lovely chat with Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, her people invited me to join her for lunch.

  Pink was in our studio and ready to perform on the day the miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell were rescued in Beaconsfield, Tasmania, in 2006. With our whole rundown thrown into disarray as we covered the breaking news, she sat patiently and waited. Eventually it became clear we simply had no room that morning, so with nothing but understanding she pre-recorded a song for us to play the day after.

&nb
sp; When we broadcast from Disneyland for the park’s fiftieth birthday celebrations in 2005 we had Dame Julie Andrews live on Sunrise. She was charming and friendly—but it got better. That night, as the biggest stars in Hollywood walked the red carpet under a sky of fireworks, she saw Kochie and me in the media crowd. She remembered both our names and came over to greet us warmly, sparking incredulous looks from the international journalists around us.

  With the stars come their fans. Justin Bieber and One Direction both caused crushes outside the studio. Young girls camped out for days to get a good spot, then cried hysterically when their idols appeared before them. Most screamed so loudly they probably didn’t hear them singing, and some even fainted and missed the whole show.

  Other bands sent us into a dither: Coldplay performing outside the Opera House in 2012 (Chris Martin is probably one of the coolest men I’ve ever met; his dad was in the crowd, spending time on the road with his son); or Chris Isaak dragging me up to dance with him as he sang ‘Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing’—I blushed so hard it almost hurt.

  But by far my favourite star is Hugh Jackman. As friendly and gracious as he is handsome and talented, he treats every interview as though it is the most important of his career and signals his minders to back away if he’s happy to keep talking. But it was when he saw me on the red carpet covering my first Oscars last year, stopped and greeted me by name and with a kiss—in front of the international media pack—that he won me for life. A ten out of ten on the Bana-meter.

  Either way, the stars have given me lots of fun stories to share at dinner parties and interesting moments to reflect on when I return to real life standing in front of the washing machine.

  BFFs

  She’ll turn up with a bottle of wine and some dinner just as the afternoon has fallen into a screaming heap and you’re having a bigger meltdown than the children.

  She’ll whisk you out for a good powerwalk on a Saturday morning when she instinctively knows you need to escape the house for an hour.