Competent, not rehearsed but revisited numerously

From a time of stand up as humorously

Confident, not overly but from experienced bravely

From a time of grand staging

Hurt, not openly but felt as deliberately

From a time of a hand as silently

Honest, not questioned as seen mentioned posturally

From a time of demand grown balanced remarkably

Giving, not withheld but found in expendable gesturing

From a time of extend with kindly

Capable, not misguided but thoughtful as presided

From a time of sensible to integral

This life today confided

For others as ability of hers provided

Well here I am, the last excercise of the day. Sitting here trying to think of something to write about. All the this random stuff is bouncing around in my head trying to make it’s presence felt. Which one do I choose?

Gee these dessert plates in front of me smell delicious. A residual scent of strawberry lingers tantalising, distracting the senses and what little attention span I do possess.

So it’s quite a novel experience being permitted, nay encouraged to let my mind wander. When this happened prior experience taught that this would normally be met with retribution.

So here’s my mind wandering around without adult supervision searching for something appropriately witty and clever when in reality my topic is about the fact that I’m struggling to find a topic. In an unexpected case of cosmic serendipity the video presentation playing in the background features a young writer undergoing the exact same problem. A story needs a Beginning, Middle and hopefully a satisfying Ending. This kindred spirit also suffers from procrastination and has used the same tricks to distract herself from the task at hand. Also the “conversations ” her dog had with her were at  least politer than the scornful disdain that is imagined in my direction from my Superior Siamese. 

The most amazing thing I learnt from this Class is that all the random crap I put myself through is perfectly normal.

So it was a very happy chappy hooting homeward down the highway rocking on to a peculiar mix of Happy Hardcore, Nostalgic 80’s , Trippy Trance with a little Alaniss Morrissette angst thrown in to keep it real. Little brain happily ticking away processing all the new concepts and tools that he can now apply to the frantic scribbling that escapes his brain on random occasions. 

So happily armed with his new Mantras of Sit Down Shut Up and Write, a dash of Suck it Up Princess. Also permission to wear a Tiara and pearls whilst creating my masterpieces makes it an unexpected adventure. I now get to happily share the incoherent ramblings of my brain with an unsuspecting but hopefully receptive audience using a new found sense of purpose and discipline. Yay me!!!! 

I don’t cook. My version of MasterChef involves the following tried and tested steps: remove packaging, pierce film, microwave, let stand and eat. If I’m asked to bring dessert, I’m thinking ‘pack of Tim Tams’ possibly opened and partly consumed.

People think I’m joking when I proudly proclaim my non-cooking prowess but I am only mildly exaggerating. In the last twelve months I have cooked on three occasions – and that’s me happily done for the year. In this era of eating clean, nation-wide bake-offs, high drama kitchen competitions devoted to finding home cooks worthy of Michelin stars, I sense the looks of disgust when I describe my anti-oven status. I assure you it is not just a lifestyle choice born of laziness and circumstance, although as a one-person, professional household I feel wholeheartedly entitled to such a slothly option. My decision to be gloriously inept in all matters culinary is an act of rebellion against the damagingly sexist dinner table politics of my childhood (politics which persist for my mother and continue to haunt me).

I am the product of a stay-at-home mum and white collar dad. Without question: I love them, they love me. There were many advantages to having a home-based parent who capably managed our household affairs and another parent who was a well-earning, generous, fiscally gifted contributor to the family income. The privileges I enjoyed I count as blessings and I don’t believe there need be anything inherently wrong with this achingly traditional arrangement if it is born by choice and nurtured by mutual respect. Unfortunately, especially for my mum, this wasn’t the case for us.

Food and cooking seemed to throw an unforgiving spotlight onto the significant gender injustice that was implicitly and consistently communicated in our home. By looking at the way meals were planned, prepared, consumed and cleared it was clear that my father’s needs, time and efforts superseded (by far) my mother’s. By example, they showed me that “men’s” contribution and time was more valuable than a woman’s. There is a deep sadness when I think of the disservice done to Mum whose worth has been crushed into shrinking portions with the passing of the years. There are deep scars she carries and I have inherited some of this wounding.

In our household Mum would wake at 5.30am every weekday morning in order to prepare a fresh fruit salad (lunch) and vegemite crackers (snacks) for Dad to take to work. He would trot off with decades-old Tupperware and dutifully prepared sustenance ready to begin his workday before 7am. Without fail, he would call the house at the completion of his day, sometime after 5pm, to let Mum know he was on his way. As a child I believed this phone call to be a romantic gesture, a reconnecting after a day apart but, in reality, it was the cue for her to have dinner on the table for shortly after his arrival home.

When dinner was dished up there was a specific sequence to the serving which reflected the family pecking order; Dad first, the brothers in order of age, then me (the only girl), and lastly Mum would serve herself. On finishing, Dad would take only his plate and only his cutlery into the kitchen, the rest of the cleaning up was left to Mum and ‘the children’.

There is a pocket of my heart reserved for a long-held, simmering rage this food-based injustice helped to stoke throughout my childhood and teenage years. Interestingly, my parents sent me to a school where “Girls can do anything” was a much used call to inspire students (you could even buy it in sticker form) and although that message was a loud and clear part of my education and encouraged by my parents, the home experience provided a distinct sub-clause; “Girls can do anything…as long as it doesn’t disrupt their men or interfere with the services they provide at home like making the meals and cleaning up”.

Tattooed on my memory is an occasion when Mum was out at choir practice (she has a beautiful voice), a rare opportunity to do something she loved and take time for herself. She assumed Dad would fix himself something for lunch, maybe not soufflé but possibly a straightforward ham and tomato sandwich. Much to her chagrin she returned home to an unfed and barely watered husband who was aghast she hadn’t been available at the expected time to prepare his food.

On another occasion I asked why, even if she must prepare Dad’s food, the fruit salad and vegemite crackers couldn’t possibly be made the night before so she could enjoy some more well-earned sleep. Mum told me: “Your father doesn’t like the crackers soggy”. On hearing this I didn’t know who deserved more of my anger, a father whose demands were unreasonable and insulting or a mother who accepted them and earned a black belt in passive aggression in the process. In all honesty, they each own sizeable real estate in my little pocket of rage even if Dad’s is bigger and comes with a view.

In response to this exasperating unfairness I couldn’t resolve, I railed against learning to cook and decided to be vocal about the gender inequalities at home. I would pipe up and ask whether Dad thought the salt, pepper and other condiments magically made their own way back into the cupboard when he continued to clear his (and only his) eating implements. I pretended my eyes were laser beams of fury when the men in my family would casually sit about chatting or watching sport happily oblivious as I laboured in the kitchen with Mum. I was clear and vocal in asking my dad and brothers to participate in the kitchen duties to be mostly ignored and sometimes even scolded for a lack of ‘graciousness’ (because the problem is how I asked, not that I had to, right?). I provided statistics from my high school feminism modules about the ongoing gender imbalance in household chores and the estimated monetary value of women’s unpaid contribution to the economy (it’s huge by the way, think billions). Nothing penetrated; from cajoling, well-researched stats, snarkiness to pleading and screaming. Dad’s routine to this day, even as a mobile and fully functioning retiree, does not include food preparation or cooking of any kind (he doesn’t even make his own sandwiches or reheat meals). At a stretch he may help with drying dishes and this is considered significant progress.

I made a vow to myself that my future relationship arrangements would hold no resemblance to that of my parents’. I would like to tell you I kept that promise but it seems that the silent lessons from my childhood home grounded out the empowering mottos of my schooling. Thankfully, I have divorced the husband who, as soon as we married, would await me coiled at the front door ready to berate me for not being home to cook him dinner. The fact that my high-paying, managerial job meant I needed to be in the office much longer hours than his academic post (which paid around half of what I was earning) seemed to have escaped him, as had the notion that he could take on the cooking duties.

When I took a part-time role said husband sat me down, itemised our paid weekly working hours and announced the difference between his full-time hours and my part-time week would become the hours I worked for him. He has ‘Doctor’ before his name but I think ‘Dick’ would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, this unintended and much regretted reneging on the commitment I made to my teenage self to avoid men like him and relationships like that means that I too am a plot holder in my pocket of rage.

So, when I say I don’t cook, it is a statement of liberation and something of a two-finger salute to the frustrating gender imbalance of my childhood home. When I say I don’t cook, I am reminding myself and telling you no man, no one, no relationship will ever write over my heart again and again, day after day, until my heart is a haggard, shrivelled barely beating pulp, “you are not and your time is not as valuable as the people with whom you share space and life”.

Should you find yourself with an invitation to dinner at mine expect Dominos and Tim Tams (well, half the pack maybe) and wine, a lot of wine.

Adolf Hitler said he liked his women young as they were like malleable candle wax.

Teenage years are a very important time for forming the foundations of who you will become as an adult. My advice to young teenage girls would be not to have a steady boyfriend in those years, so that you can grow yourself without input from one prominent, or dominant, person. But I know as a teenager I would have never listened to that advice from anyone so my wisdom is superfluous and I’m not sure I’d bother trying to impart it.

I had my first boyfriend from years 13 to 15.   I broke up with him because his jealousy was stifling. Then I was alone all of a week or something before I met my next boyfriend. He was six years older than me and we went out together for 7 years. And boy did he fuck with my head in those formative years. It was impossible to shed his thoughts and opinions even though I did manage to summons up the wherewithal to realise that he was controlling me. It took years and years of professional therapy, DIY therapy – which for me was exorcising the crap through writing and creating, and an eleven-year stint of being single to dispel the particularly damaging ideas that had been planted in my mind by him. I can finally accept, for example, that it’s not the worst thing in the world that my boobs droop after bearing four kids and getting old.  And now with that sort of negativity pushed away I am able to embrace the positive residue left from that relationship and others.  

When I was 15 that controlling boyfriend taught me to drive in a V8 1960 Ford Fairlane on a 3000km round trip from Brisbane to Kynuna. My head still swivels when any vehicle pre-1970 crosses my path and my idea of a good weekend or even an annual holiday is a road-trip.  Last year my current partner and I spent our annual leave driving 4000km’s. I put that holiday right up there with my couple of overseas trips.

Since I was 16 I have owned five Mk2 Cortina’s. I bought my most recent one about 3 years ago when my sad and addled son wrote off my practical but boring Camry. It was a horrendously stressful phase of our lives and the thought of replacing my car with yet another predictable lady’s car made my stomach and heart churn. Scouring the classifieds I jumped to the classic car section, maybe just maybe there would be a Mk2 up for sale. I could get excited about that and I really needed some joy! I set myself a price limit and if there was one listed I would go for it.

Next year, Blanche, my 1967 Mk2 Cortina turns 50. I decided I would like to celebrate her birthday in some official way. I asked my daughter if she would make some fancy little cushions with Blanche and 50 embroidered on them and hot pink pom poms as a trim. I would then put under the back window for all to see. And then I thought, why stop at that? When I throw a party I like to throw a party!

They say write about things you are passionate about and it’s really only dawned on me in the last few years that old cars are a passion for me. The 50^th celebration plans for Blanche have grown into Old Girls on the Road. Before I did the Gunnas workshop with Dev (Friday 30 Dec) I had a lot of ideas on how I was going to go about producing Old Girls, but I’m very thrilled to say many of those ideas have gone out the window of the scrumptious Continental Cafe. Before, I was excited but a little bit daunted. Now I am still excited, but it’s all feeling very doable and I just can’t wait to start doing.

So, I have been a university student for 20 years now. Not what I intended, or wanted. What I wanted was a new job. You know, like universities promise in their advertising. One that was a bit more substantial than the job my parents had planned out for me from childhood. And I wanted to be finished before I was 40. Ha. I’m 52 now and I am reaching, desperately, for the light at the end of the tunnel.

What had my parents planned for me? My parents wanted me to be a little music teacher – yes, a ‘little’ music teacher. A little music teacher is a music teacher who works from home. This would be with their grandchildren running around my legs, of course, primed and ready to take care of their every whim in their dotage. And so I played along, all the while planning how to make my escape.

I knew from an early age I would not be going to university after high school. My family didn’t and doesn’t do education. I am the first person in my family to finish high school, let alone attempt higher education. This includes uncles, aunts, and cousins. I wish I could tell you my family was full of happy diamonds in the rough. Truth is it is full of very unhappy people, some in prison, many on pensions, who like to tear each other apart at every opportunity. And I remain the black sheep.

Where did my hapless university career start? When I was 34, I auditioned and was accepted to study a bridging program in classical piano. I had planned this since I was 12. I had longed to play the piano since I was 3 or so. One of my earliest memories is being threatened by the kindergarten teacher that if I did not stop touching the piano I would not be allowed to go swimming with the rest of the class in the harbour – and then having to watch my peer’s bathing capped heads bobbling in the water from a seat on the shore. I loved swimming, but I loved that siren, the piano, more. But, as everyone knows, my father told me, classical music is for snobs and since he did not want me to be a snob I would not study piano. Naturally, since my parents did not approve, I was obsessed.

I carried my obsession for thirty-odd years. Now, to say my father became angry when I told the parental unit I had been accepted into the local conservatorium studying a bridging program as a classical piano major 31 years later would be an understatement. Apoplectic, livid, enraged – he told me if he had known I would eventually pursue this artsy fartsy crap, he would have dragged me out of school when I was 15 and made me get a real job. He reminded me they told me if I went to uni, they would never talk to me again, and they meant it. Yeah? Three guesses why I haven’t told you before this, dad – and the first two are duds. They meant it and I knew they meant it.   And except for a handful of family meetings where I was told what a major, major disappointment I was and how I had driven my mother to heavy doses of mogodon and other prescription drugs, that was it.

My friends laughingly call me a professional student. They, too, have never been to university. If they had they would know nothing could be further from the truth. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the idea of a professional student is a hangover from the era of free education where students could drift from one degree to another without the noose of HECS or HELP or any other government imposed fee scheme leaving them with tens of thousands of dollars of debt. There is nothing professional about my time at university. There has also been nothing aimless, just frustration.

Seeing as I have been at uni for 20 years now, you’re probably guessing my bridging year in classical music did not go to plan and you would be right, but that is a long story for another day. That along with all of the other times I have managed to get into trouble in higher education. These are many and they are varied and just one would be enough to turn any sensible person away, but not me. I thought all these years what was happening was my fault. If I just worked harder, if I was just smarter, if I studied more, then everything would be alright.

Then, three years ago, I was talking with an independent academic advisor at the university about my PhD woes and I had an epiphany. This ‘independent’ person was in the middle of telling me there must be something wrong with me and that I must do as I was told. And right there, at the age of 49 I realised it wasn’t me – it was them. I had heard this before. What a load of crap. The constant disapproval, the holding at arm’s length – university had become my surrogate parent.

Now at the 20-year mark, I am at the brink of submitting my PhD thesis. Problem is, I don’t see any reason to submit it. It’s not that I don’t love my research, I do, but there is absolutely no advantage to me in submitting. The university has shown me numerous ways they will crush my research and I am sure they will if I let them.   I don’t know how I feel about this. I should feel angry, but I don’t. What I feel is indignant. Why should this institution receive $85K from the government and the even more important completion data after the rollicking they have given me? My research will always be mine and it will always be something I can be proud of. If I submit and they bury it, it’s gone – and why would I let them?

The meeting with the independent academic advisor not only opened my eyes, but pointed me to a completely different path. I had been feeling like a victim. What had happened? Two days after our regular meeting, my principal supervisor had sent me a ‘Dear Jo’ email. He had decided he didn’t want to supervise me anymore and I would have to leave. I then spent 10 months trying to find a solution. I went back and forth between my supervisor and the dean of research with no hope of resolution anywhere in sight.

It turns out supervisors are not allowed to just dump students over email, or any other way. It’s the law, apparently. If a supervisor cannot continue to supervise they must find a replacement suitable to both parties. University regulations state this and my supervisor had signed a contract to this affect. That they continued to ignore this and acted with impunity, encouraged me to dig my heels in. This, and 10 months of not being spoken to by anyone led me to the meeting with the independent academic advisor.

How a university professor can be independent advisor to students remains a mystery, but thankfully provided me with my lightbulb moment. After the meeting I sat back and thought about what I am really good at. All the advice from university, family, friends, and colleagues was I should just leave. It was really stressful and it was even more pointless. And then, there is was – my talent, my skill, my gift – what I am really good at – getting into trouble at university. According to cognitive psychology (and I have a degree in that) it takes 10 years to become an expert, so I am an expert in getting into trouble at university twice over and as George Gershwin said, they can’t take that away from me. They can’t take anything away from me unless I let them, and since I have learned to say no in a loud, clear voice, my days of waiting passively for approval that will never come are definitively and categorically over.

Why stay? There are advantages to remaining in the system. It turns out that if you hang around long enough, you can get yourself into all sorts of situations – sitting on boards with the deans, for one. And when your goal is to understand what is happening and why, and you keep your ear to the ground you learn a lot. My goal for a while has been to find out why, and I think I am getting a pretty good handle on it. This isn’t just my story – and it actually has barely scratched the surface. This happens more than you would think in many forms to many students, both domestic and international. Just what to do about it…..more trouble on the horizon, that’s for sure. And I don’t think I would want it any other way.

I never wanted kids. I told my mum and anyone who would listen that there was no way in hell I was ever procreating. Never. Ever.  The world was too fucked and under no circumstances would I voluntarily bring another living, breathing human being into this world.

Then, Saturn return hits. Or that’s what mum says. Time to grow up. Stop faffing around. Be a grown up. Late 20s. That’s when it hits you – apparently. Or maybe it’s my biological clock ticking away. Tick. Tock. 28. Fucking Saturn and fucking biology. They have a lot to answer for.

***

What the fuck was I thinking. It was all just some bullshit, delusional quest. A quest to … what? Raise my kids in an intact family? What the fuck even is that? An intact family. Whole. Better. Is it better? When does it stop being better? When I’m a shell of a person because I’m forcing myself to co-habit with someone I can’t stand? Year after bloody year? But how’s that different to loads of other couples? Does it stop being better when all too regularly I find myself snapping at the kids because I’m really bloody angry with him? So much anger. It comes and goes. But it’s always there, just below the surface waiting to rear it’s god-awful head. So much pushing down.  Down. Down. Down. Stay down. Letting go. There’s plenty of that too. Letting go of dreams. Of hopes. Dreams and hopes. Dreams of living a rich and full life brimming with love. Love beyond that of a parent and child. Love shared with someone there’s a deep and enduring and intimate connection with. A romantic and fanciful notion? Who the fuck knows. All I know is that I want with all my being to demonstrate to my kids – and to me – that this is possible.  So what the hell am I doing here? Treading water. Day after day. Some days not treading, but drifting down. Down. Down. Down.  Immersing my two little people in a world of seething anger. Never-ending undercurrents of frustration and despair. For what? Because I’m too stubborn to admit defeat? I don’t think it’s that. It’s lots of things, some of which is certainly based in stubbornness. But it’s this absolute commitment to never asking of my kids what I would not be prepared to do myself. It stops me from taking that step – that dreaded step. I know I would hate living in two homes. I love home. My home. My bed. My pillow. My books. My desk. Who wants to live a schizophrenic life of two homes. Two beds. Two toothbrushes. I sure as fuck don’t. And I’m pretty damn sure they wouldn’t want to either.  I mean, how does that even work? How do you get a rhythm in life. A sense of continuity. Stability. Flow.