Alphabet Soup

by Melissa Doyle

  They were incredulous when I told them I used to wait until the radio DJ had stopped announcing the song so I could quickly press record on my old red tape deck to make my own dodgy compilation tapes.

  Today my son downloads music from iTunes for me and compiles his own playlists. He consolidates the apps on my iPhone, can iQ a show on Foxtel and enter his footy tips online.

  My daughter manoeuvres the internet with the dexterity of someone who has grown up doing it. She can find her way around the Barbie website with the same skill I used to apply to simply dressing Barbie.

  When we bought Poppy an iPod for his birthday, it was his granddaughter who taught him how to use it. And not so long ago Talia asked me if she could install Kik so she could chat with her friends. I said no because she was too young. When I suggested she just pick up the phone and ring them, she looked at me in shock.

  Like most children of their generation they are learning computers at school and appear completely undaunted by the array of information before them. Projects now involve PowerPoint presentations and memory sticks. They don’t know life without mobile phones, GPS or laptops. Encyclopaedias no longer crowd our bookshelves; any information they need is just a Google search away.

  Maths homework is done on a website that lets them compete with kids anywhere in the world. Travel news from friends comes in via their parent’s Facebook, and postcards no longer arrive in the mail.

  I’ve listened to the advice of every single expert who says monitor and take a keen interest in what your kids are doing online. The computer is on my desk near the kitchen and I am never far away.

  I must admit to only recently moving from my trusty Filofax to an electronic diary. I held on to the familiarity of paper and pen for as long as possible, until I was the dinosaur in the family.

  But while I can remember the originals of half the remixes I now hear on the radio, I know it’s no different to when I was growing up and my parents were faced with the same issues. I giggled at Dad’s LP collection, and can remember the brick-like phones we first had mounted in the news cars in my early days of journalism.

  It’s just that in my head I don’t feel quite that ‘mature’ yet.

  Teddy

  My teddy is a 40-plus-year-old panda with unnaturally short limbs and not a lot of fur left. He sits somewhere in my cupboard behind handbags and hats . . . accessories more befitting a woman of my age.

  He reminds me that I was once little and totally devoted to the very first partner that shared my bed.

  While I can’t completely part with him, I also can’t remember when he went from being the most important friend I had to a mangy looking soft toy.

  And now, after many years of devotion, being dragged around by one arm, and participation in every major and minor event in Nick’s life, his teddy is moving on too. Or up in the world, depending on how you look at it.

  Instead of being bundled under the doona every night with my son, Teddy now sits up on the bedhead and watches over his little sleeping friend with wisdom and affection.

  Rather than a demotion, I see it as a changing of the guard. He’s been replaced with a soccer ball in winter, a cricket bat and ball in summer, and an AFL ball on Sundays.

  My little boy is growing up.

  There is something slightly sad about no longer seeing your child’s sweet little arms wrapped around their faithful bear. Personally, I can’t see how a cricket ball can provide any warmth or softness at all.

  Talia is a little more generous with her affections. She too has a favourite teddy who takes prime position, but she spends a good five minutes at bedtime lining up teddy number two, an elephant, a unicorn, a couple of Barbies and whatever else is in favour that day. She is squished to one side and doesn’t stretch out until we tiptoe in after she’s asleep to remove a few of the more uncomfortable items, such as books or ballet shoes.

  Although Nick’s teddy may have been relocated, he is still much loved and a source of comfort, particularly if Nick has a less than stellar day on the footy field, an injury in the playground or a good dressing down from his mum or dad.

  And I can be comforted for a few more years that it’s a Sherrin in his bed, and not a Sharon.

  Thrift

  As I sit on the lounge-room floor with a needle, some thread and a little pile of clothes that need repairing, I suddenly feel rather old-fashioned, but modern at the same time.

  Darning is one of those forgotten skills that is once again flourishing through necessity. Thrift is the new black because the world is in the red and has a desire to be green.

  Is this the universe’s way of bringing everything back into balance? If the current generation is all about ME, then is a global financial crisis Mother Nature’s way of cutting the big spender off at the knees and bringing her back to old-fashioned values?

  I’m proud to be a career woman, but I am secretly just as proud to channel my inner housewife and use my nanna’s 46-year-old Sunbeam Mixmaster to whip up a birthday cake. I love making sausage rolls and sewing nametags onto the kids’ gear.

  Faced with having to tighten the purse strings, we are forced to return to our nanna’s skills set. It may be driven by need, but ultimately it’s about being practical. Thrift is good for the planet, good for our wallets and good for our own satisfaction.

  Now before you conclude I’m some modern Mrs Cleaver, rest assured I cut corners as well as the next mum. The filling in my sausage rolls might be homemade, but the pastry is bought. I may buy the kids’ clothes a size too big and hem them in order to get an extra year’s wear, but it’s a pretty dodgy job!

  I remember my grandmother washing the plastic bags she used to bring the fruit home in. She saved every jar and reused them for her homemade jams or sauces. She had spent her life on the land and made it through the war with very little, so knew what it was like to go without. She was thrifty because she had to be.

  Today’s conditions might not be as tough, but they call for similar measures. We are all tightening our belts, thinking twice about which cuts of meat we buy and in which areas we can trim the fat.

  We’re even learning to ‘shop’ our own wardrobes. It’s called ‘slow fashion’: when you buy something that lasts longer than one season. Apparently the trend is to use clothes you already have in your wardrobe and wear them in different ways. One magazine editor wrote about the novelty of having something for more than five years and actually wearing it.

  Wow, my economic credentials are frightening even me. I must have been planning for the GFC for some time now. I’m wearing clothes I’ve owned for ten years. I’d be wearing more, if they still fitted.

  Who on earth starts her wardrobe again each season? Who doesn’t wear clothes she bought last year? Does it really take a GFC to teach people to stop wasting money?

  In our house, it’s the kids who need new stock each season—not because they are fashion savvy, but because they grow like weeds. Pants that I hem at the beginning of winter need letting down by the season’s end. Sleeves are inching up their arms, and feet are pretty quickly being squashed into shoes.

  That’s why my daughter goes to school in a size-too-big winter tunic reaching half way down her shins and her sleeves rolled up, because Mummy, the recessionista, sees no point in forking out for a uniform that she’ll grown out of in three months.

  We see a sale and we stock up. We tap into the hand-me-down network. I scored four school uniforms for Talia from the friend of a friend. I then paid it forward by passing on Nick’s winter pants to a work colleague with a son two years younger.

  And I don’t really think my friends can tell if my plain black pants are this year’s cut or 2010’s. I have no idea so I can only assume they don’t either.

  I also look at some of my purchases safe in the knowledge I can one day hand them down to my daughter. Anything I buy of quality is justified with the intention that I will one day pass it on to her. I’m sure she’ll find it all incredibly daggy and we’ll have o
ne of those ‘I can’t believe you wore that, Mum!’ conversations, but I have myself convinced that what I buy might one day be vintage and coveted.

  Twenty years from now . . . that’s slow fashion.

  Which brings me back to my pile of sewing. Why not darn the socks or mend the knickers? It saves me buying new ones.

  Everything seems to go in cycles. The generation that does it tough makes sure the next never misses out. Baby boomers gave their children every opportunity. The current generation has grown up in a time of abundance of everything from jobs to life choices. So maybe this is the world’s way of slowing that down, throwing a little challenge into the mix so we appreciate what we have. Some children will grow up affected by a global recession, so maybe they and their peers will have similar values to my grandmother’s and appreciate that not everything is to be thrown away—a backlash to the excess of the eighties, perhaps.

  For this or other reasons it seems we are all focusing a little more on home. We’re cooking more, gardening more and even sales in craft supplies are up.

  Hopefully manufacturers will follow suit and go back to making goods that last. I wish for mixmasters that survive as long as my nanna’s and socks that won’t need darning.

  Tragedy

  Like many families, we sat and watched in horror as the human tragedy of the Victorian bushfires unfolded on our TV screen in February 2009. From the safety of our home, we shook our head in disbelief as we heard the death toll slowly mount and knew that this was far worse than the normal summer fires.

  On the Sunday, as the worst of the flames ripped through so many pretty Victorian towns, I travelled to Whittlesea to cover the unfolding events for Sunrise. Nothing could have prepared me for the scenes of devastation, loss and heartbreak amid occasional glimmers of hope that have forever stamped this as the worst event of its kind in Australian history.

  We are inundated with words and stories and graphic images in our everyday life, so often from the other side of the world, that when confronted with tragedy in our own backyard, it can seem surreal.

  Such an event presents a situation of stunning contrast and conflict, a rollercoaster of emotional extremes that seems never-ending. Despite having covered disasters like the Beaconsfield mine collapse in 2006, I had never before witnessed such a dichotomy. Grief and elation punctuated the crowd of people gathered at the community centre and often within minutes of each other.

  It’s an Aussie truism that when the chips are down, you can rely on your mates. That sentiment was certainly true in Victoria in the aftermath of the bushfires.

  Deservedly, much was said and written about the volunteers, firefighters, medical crews and emergency services—their stories will forever inspire us in their bravery and move us by their generosity of spirit. For all that, the smaller, sometimes unseen gestures will remain with me. Never before had I witnessed such an overwhelming community response to the needs of individuals.

  As I stood and watched the sadness unfold, I saw good news and bad. I saw how people responded as they tried to deal with and comprehend what was in front of them.

  I watched women arrive laden with home-cooked meals, salads and platters of fruit, selflessly delivered to community halls and sites throughout the district. Men carried boxes overflowing with linen and blankets. People arrived with garbage bags stuffed with baby clothes and toys. Others arrived with shopping bags full of freshly purchased groceries. And others thought of toothbrushes and tissues, baby food and pet food.

  I saw an elderly women walk into an evacuation centre clutching her dog—the only remaining possession that was truly her own. The children of a family who walked out of the centre were wearing fresh clothes and boots a few sizes too big—but they were together and grateful nonetheless.

  I stood for hours outside the Whittlesea community centre as people swarmed, desperate to hear if their family, friends or neighbours were alive. With no official word able to reach them, they simply had no idea. What cruel agony to endure.

  One man paced for hours waiting for someone—anyone—to tell him if they had seen his wife and three children. Last he heard his family was holed up at home. There had since been no communication. He couldn’t get past the police line to check for himself and nobody else could get to the house to give him any answers and put him out of his misery. The waiting was tearing him up as minutes passed like hours, prolonging his pain.

  Others wrote names on yellow Post-it notes and stuck them to the community notice board in the hope that missing relatives would see the note and ring to say they were alive and well.

  All around me were tears and embraces. There were the sympathetic voices, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and the sobbing responses. One woman fell to the ground howling when she got news. A grief counsellor fell down beside her and scooped her into her arms. In the next instant, a woman drove past with the window down yelling out good news that her neighbour Laura had been found alive on the far reaches of her property.

  There were extraordinary displays of emotional support. Strangers hugging strangers and consoling one another, offering cups of tea and a quiet place to sit to try to comprehend the enormity of what they were hearing but didn’t want to believe.

  How uplifting it is to see such support and unconditional love appear unsolicited from unexpected places just when it’s needed the most, when so many are feeling alone and helpless.

  So often we hear news stories of indifference to our fellow man—but not in Whittlesea. Not that week.

  I saw only the best from strangers; the true Aussie spirit rising to the occasion. Whatever we might say about each other we know this: in times of need we are all here for each other.

  Covering events such as these has no doubt changed me as a person. The moment they no longer affect me is when I should pack away my journalist’s pen and notebook. They also deeply affect me as a mother. I come home and hug my children, grateful they are safe.

  Tweetheart

  I used to take my nightly Sunrise conference call with my mobile on mute, tucked into the pocket of my apron and my earphones plugged in. At the same time I would scan my iPad for recipe ideas. My son would be watching TV, my daughter doing her maths homework on the computer, my husband emailing work from his laptop at the kitchen table.

  We are constantly wired, connected and in touch with the world . . . we just have to make sure we stay in touch with each other. Come dinner time, everything is switched off, but I wish I could do it more at other times.

  Why is that little alert tone from my phone such a lure? Why, when it beeps at me, or the phone rings, do I feel the urge to respond?

  I’m hardly an on-call brain surgeon, but I have a strange compulsion to be contactable at all times. Maybe it’s the journalist in me, trained never to miss a story. Maybe I simply kid myself that I’m more important than I really am.

  When my kids and hubby are with me it’s easier to turn off the phone; after all, those who need me the most have no need to call.

  I also try really hard to switch off when the kids come home from school. I try and give them my full attention as we tackle homework and discuss playground politics. I don’t want them to think they come second.

  There is nothing I hate more than talking to someone and they answer their ringing phone mid-conversation. It makes me feel so offended, so I try not to do that to my kids.

  Maybe we all need a little technology free-time . . .

  We’ve all seen that mum at the park, chatting on her mobile while her child plays alone. She might be spending time with him, but it’s wasted if she’s spending it talking to someone else.

  And we’ve probably all been the mum on the phone shushing our kids as we talk or text.

  I share my time with so many people all day, so when I’m with my kids I really want to be theirs. I don’t want them to think that technology is the only way we communicate nowadays, either. I still handwrite thank you notes and make my kids do the same.

  I’m also very awar
e that cyberspace has become the new toilet wall. People are a lot quicker and braver to be nasty when they have a degree of anonymity.

  My kids are on the brink of Facebook and communicating with the world via the internet. For now, I monitor closely everything they do online and have the power to control what they look at and who they talk to. And long may it last.

  We have the computer on my desk in a common area. I regularly check what they have been looking at and who they have been talking to.

  And sometimes it’s me. When a little email pops up from my son telling me he loves me, well then maybe technology is not such a bad thing after all.

  Umpiring

  Who knew there were so many scenes for potential conflict when you have more than one child?

  Disputing what we watch on TV I can understand, but does it really matter who sits on what side in the back seat of the car?

  I put the armrest down as some sort of Berlin Wall, but still they somehow manage to argue about who climbs in which door, and who sits behind the driver.

  One moment they can be such angels, so gorgeous and kind to one another that John and I smile in the knowledge we must be doing ok in this parenting business. But moments later our confidence is gone as the kids break into a fight over who gets to walk through the front door first when we get home.

  They even fight over which one of my hands they hold! Apparently the left one is better. Who knew? Thank God I only have two children or we’d be having some real issues.

  They used to argue over who would get out of the bath last and get the chance to stretch out and splash. It got so bad I made a chart: a piece of paper and a pencil Blu-Tacked to the wall to keep a roster of whose turn it was to get in or out first.

  They would fight over who sits where at the dinner table. There is apparently ‘A’ and ‘B’ seating in my kitchen. So we all picked our own seats and stuck to those. That works well, until someone else joins us for dinner, such as Poppy. Then it’s a whole new battle over who sits next to the guest of honour. My daughter has now started keeping track.