Achilles and Athanasia — a letter of un-apology

 So this is it... Day 1 of the A–Z blogfest. When I checked this morning, 1643 people had signed up to be part of the challenge, and to be perfectly honest, I feel A for Anxiety would probably be a better place for me to start. Writing twenty-six posts around a theme frightens the be-hooey out of me. Disciplined is not my middle name. But twenty-six letters inspired by the alphabet I promised, and so twenty-six letters there shall be... plus a song each day.... and a question...

Picture me holding my nose, squinching my eyes closed and leaping off a cliff into the brain-freezing waters of uncertainty... Here we go...

My darling Achilles

 Word has reached me of your misery and anguish at finding yourself in the eternal afterlife. I accept, Archie-sweets, that you expected to be immortal like your father and me—we all did. My heart aches that my efforts and best intentions to that end failed, but my darling boy, no amount of petulant wailing and chest-beating about feeling wronged will alter your situation. You were, indeed, a man, so I’m afraid manning-up is your only option. Like it or not.

 Truly, Achilles, I did everything I could to assure you a permanent pass to Mount Olympus. Night after sleepless night I ardently devoted myself to your baptism by fire. And Zeus only knows how many of your father’s hard-earned obal I lavished on the ambrosial balm I massaged into your adored little body in my attempt to make you impermeable. It was your father who put an end to that avenue to immortality. He panicked. OK, it’s accurate to say that our six babies before you ended up as ash, but you were special. I knew that. It was your affrighted father who doubted your destiny. Not me.
 
Please appreciate how positively heartsick I am that you attribute your having been slain by that well-aimed arrow to the heel to my inadequate mothering. Of course I acknowledge that it was a pretty embarrassing way for you to die, especially after you’d kicked such serious butt at Troy. But Archie dearest, are you aware just how awkward trying to dunk an inverted baby into the River Styx is? Managing to hold you by just the one ankle was quite an accomplishment. You were a feisty tot, and a slippery little sucker, too. Perhaps you should count your lucky stars that’s all I had hold of.  

So, my darling son, it would seem that having Goddess Angelina’s Brad depict you, while an actor most famous for playing an albino elf represents your assassin Paris, is possibly your best shot at ageless acclaim. Well, that and the fact that the appellation of a particularly vulnerable and ever-so-mortal tendon guarantees athletes will fear hearing a physician utter your name ad infinitum.

Yours unapologetically in athanasia,

Màna, Thetis

ps Dad says hi.
 
 And the song for the day? Well, what else but ABC's Poison Arrow. 
OK... yes... I know it's about Cupid but cut me some slack here! 

Question of the day: When have you been inspired to un-apologise?

The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is 26 non-Sundays in April, blogging through the alphabet with a couple of thousand other crazy people..

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

  Oscar Wilde would definitely be invited to my dream dinner party. He could fill the evening with witty and shocking stories, mostly true tales of debauchery and academia. Utterly delicious. And I think I might seat him between Woody Allen and Katherine Hepburn to ensure there’s plenty of zing—sexual tension, smouldering innuendo and unfettered eccentricity with lashings of fine wine.

Right across from the three of them I’d seat my dearest long-time friends John and Jenny. I know they’d have fun. There’d be laughter and plentiful mutual admiration. John would both shock and fascinate Oscar with his award-winning body-building physique, his incredibly well-crafted Mardi Gras costumes, and his erudite knowledge of all things artistic and stylish. He’d probably intimidate Woody, but let’s face it. Who wouldn’t?

Jen would have Katherine’s head tipped sideways in rapt admiration as she chatted about sea-kayaking off the coast of Patagonia, having her beloved dog’s ashes compressed into a diamond, and existing in the twin worlds of conventional medicine and naturopathy. Katherine would adore her. I know she would. And Woody might just find the inspiration for his next movie.

Some friendships are like that, aren’t they? We three have known each other for more than forty years. At various times, each of us has lived away from Australia for extended periods. But it has never mattered. As things stand now, we are still separated by thousands of kilometres. But that doesn’t matter either. Whenever we are together, Distance and Time dissolve in the laughter and champagne bubbles.

Other people have claimed we have the sort of friendship that even if we see each other but rarely can just be picked up wherever we left off. Some would probably continue to assert it even  today. But they’d be mistaken. Or kidding themselves. Because for them, unseen is the same as invisible. Our friendship amounts to little more than a sort of comfortable habit that can be broken. 

Or forgotten. 

Discarded. 

Disregarded.

Their warmth is just air kissing.

 I’d never invite them to my dream dinner party.

But I probably wouldn't want them to be eaten by zombies either. 

The Great and Powerful Theme Reveal — A to Z Challenge

 Dearest All & Zundry,

As the clicky linky pic thing to the right of this post reveals, I am participating in another month-long blogging event during April. So far, 1150 bloggers have signed up to write for the 26 non-Sundays of April, with each day being represented by a letter of the alphabet.

Now, as regular visitors know, this blog is usually arbitrary bits-and-pieces cobbled deftly together. During April, however, I intend to follow the advice of previous participants and will endeavour fervently to conform to the goddamn hellish idea of writing to a theme. And today is theme reveal day.

Jostling keenly for contention have been literary, mischievous, noble and ordinary possibilities. Quite realistically, some topics I usually think very worthy of exploring, just didn’t lend themselves to being alphabetised. Or would have bored you guys up a drainpipe. So I zeroed in on the central concept.

Letters.

That’s what I’ll be writing: twenty-six letters of various types, to and from whomever I please. And each letter will be inspired by a letter.

You might find an apology to Adam from Eve,  a soldier’s note to Florence Nightingale, a hate letter from Baby Born to Barbie, an audit request of the Tooth Fairy, a love letter from Catherine to Heathcliff, or perhaps God's letter of resignation.  

Anything is pozzible.

All good things,

Wendy

ps: For an added degree of difficulty, I’m going to try  also to add an appropriate song. And where better to start than with Patti Smith asking you to come 'break all the rules' and ‘ride like writers ride’ in April Fool.

  

This post is here linked to the A–Z Theme Reveal Blogfest

The Sperm Donor

'Well, look who I ran into,'crowed Coincidence.
'Please,'flirted Fate, 'this was meant to be.'
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1

There were only sixteen of us in the group, even so, I knew there was no way I going to remember everyone’s name. Yes, we had each labeled our chest with a sticky tag upon arrival, but some people had used a plain blue biro that I couldn’t see from the other side of the table, while another had the sort of hand-writing that made it almost impossible to tell an a from and e, or whether that was double-r or an m.

I don’t know about you, but I reckon there’s something a bit creepy about a stranger surreptitiously peering at your left breast while you’re speaking to them. And let’s face it, those sticky tags have a habit of losing their stick pretty damn quickly. The seminar is rarely half over before Hadley the coffee cup joins the crowd by the sink, and someone’s right loafer has picked up Galatea.

Tell us something memorable about yourself. Perhaps choose something you’re proud of, something unique or funny, something you’re happy for us to remember you by.

It was almost my turn.  Two more introductions, then me.

The bitch inside my head slammed words against my skull like a squash ball thudding on the grubby court walls: dull, plain, old, trite, drab, sad, tame, bland—forgettable. You’re eminently forgettable…

Still, somehow, the voice of the quietly spoken young woman to my right began to plink through the echoing fog haze of my panic. Right after she’d explained that she worked in a highly specific and, frankly, to me quite intimidating field, she added something like this:

 And… well… I was donor conceived, and my search for the man who is my biological father has been quite public. Some of you might have seen the documentary about it.  And…well… actually… it turns out that my paternal grandfather is a rather famous Australian academic …

As she named him, I began to see the likeness. Not to the famous academic. To his son.

To the guy I’d known at uni.
To an anonymous student who gave sperm in exchange for money.

To the smiling bearded guy with the unnervingly blue eyes who’d shared a house with one of my friends and who, for several years, I’d thought was kind of gorgeous.

To her biological father.

I guess it shouldn’t have felt weird. But it did.

It felt like one of those life-imitating-art moments.

I was swallowed by images of nights sharing lentil and vegie mash in mismatched bowls. Secondhand chairs around a rickety table. Energetic, idealistic, expansive conversations fuelled by our passion for our studies. And cheap wine.

 
Anything was possible.

Everything was unknown.

I was not who I am now.

Not who I am now, but no more memorable then than now.

He wouldn’t remember me.

I will have left no impression.

No sticky tag on his memory.

Tell us something memorable about yourself… something you’re happy for us to remember you by…

All hail Isabel of Ararat...

On this mild Monday, I just want to write a short but heartfelt shout-out to 91-year-old Isabel Mackenzie of Ararat who, as I type, has chained herself to a huge and magnificent River Red Gum in protest at the destruction of such ancient beauties for the widening of the highway. Isabel, you rock. 

1924, the year Isabel was born, was a good one. Clarence Birdseye invented frozen food, people here in Victoria heard a local radio station for the first time, and George Gershwin gave us Rhapsody in Blue. Now, while the advent of snap frozen vegetables can undoubtedly be said to be a boon to all housewives wealthy enough to have a freezer from that time forth, that's pretty much what most women either were, or aspired to being ... a housewife with a freezer. I'm tipping that political protest wasn't part of the landscape of a country woman's lifestyle in 1924.

Isabel was six the year that Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup and Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, and she was 13 the year that Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. 1945, the year Isabel turned 21, signaled the end of WW2. It was also the year women in France won the right to vote. Four years later, Simone de Beauvoir penned The Second Sex.

Half Isabel’s life-time ago, in 1969, the fearless and fearsome Zelda D’Aprano chained herself to the doors of the Melbourne Arbitration Court when a case for equal pay for women in the Meatworkers’ Union failed to produce anything more than a token increase. She refused to accept powerlessness.

I don't know Isabel Mackenzie, but I feel pretty safe in saying that a woman of 91 has seen a great deal of change. She's watched the city spread its toxic breath over the countryside and the back roads grow into highways. And over those years, she's witnessed injustices and atrocities against nature that have finally led her to take a stand:

"These trees are hundreds of years old and I was hoping maybe something would be left for the next few generations to see."

Good for you, Isabel. You're a role model and a wake-up call and a pick-me-up tonic and a shiny grey-haired example of refusing to be invisible. You're a humanist and an activist and a warrior for good.

All hail, Isabel of Ararat.
I salute you. 

10 Mothering Things I'm a Bit Shit At

The first time anyone told me I was fail as a mother was back when the man-child was only in Year Six. My crime was the patent child-abuse of not allowing him to have a computer or a gaming console in his bedroom. Truly. It’s a wonder there weren’t social workers beating our door down.

Nonetheless, a huge amount of angst was created when his peers declared me a fail tightarse, assuring him that they would totally own him in no time. Nice boys they were. And every one of them from a very non-fail family. Indeed, one of them was blessed with a mother who was so NOT fail that she was unfazed by the nudie pics he had chosen to plaster his room with,  because…well.. you know… boys will be boys.

But as the kids get older, I’m fail a lot more. A whole lot more.

Yesterday I was fail after devoting the day to repurposing odds and sods into one of Andie’s ‘volcanic ensembles’ from Pretty in Pink . (Today’s fundraiser at school is ‘Come as your favourite movie character or actor.’)

The day before that I was fail because the sport uniform that had not been put in the laundry was still dirty.

And the day before that I was fail because nobody else really felt like smoked chicken and spinach pasta for dinner.

So in an attempt to remind myself that there are ways I can avoid being epic fail all the time, or at everything, I thought I might just make a quick list of ten things I need to remember I’m a little bit crap at. So here goes.

I’m just a bit shit at:

1.     mind reading

2.     being in three places at once

3.     caring if the exact item of clothing required at any given second has been  ironed

4.     not getting annoyed when the dog decorates the house with slobbery fragments of the leftover lunches — both foodstuffs and wrappings—it found under the bed/in the bottom of a school bag/in the overflowing bin of someone’s bedroom

5.     realising that we have run out of a metric fuckton of things that nobody put on the shopping list

6.     remembering everyone else’s daily timetable

7.     whipping up cordon bleu meals every night

8.     having the car radio on the right station

9.     comprehending how the world can turn simultaneously around each and every teenager in the universe

10. being invisible on demand.

I’m sure there's plenty more I could add, but I reckon that will give me enough to work on for now. Wish me luck!

Brown Eyes Blue Eyes

For the past 24 hours, the English-speaking world has been ablaze with the mystery of the blue/black/white/gold dress.  What colour is it really? Is the whole thing a click-bait scam? Who sees what? It’s been one of those Internet phenomena that verify what a small planet this is, how close we all are and yet how different. And how many of us are willing to be completely and utterly diverted by trivia. It came during a week in which perspective and disparity in how we see the world has weighed heavily on me.

When Manchild was only in Grade 2, his world shifted seismically. Mr Inquisitive, a chattering cheerful junior scientist couldn’t resist the temptation to look at everything with his fingers. He skipped through life with an infectious smile, filling each day with a running commentary of all that he saw and heard and thought and felt and wondered. Then it all stopped. It didn’t just begin to diminish as he grew older and more self-conscious. It stopped. 

 'Mummy, she doesn’t like my face. She smiles at the boys with yellow hair. She never smiles at me.'

He was talking about his Grade 2 teacher. A tall, powerfully built woman, older than the teachers he was used to, but that wasn’t the problem. She was as old as me. I was 41 by the time his adoption was finalised. She was tall and fair-haired and strict. That wasn’t the problem either. I’m tall and fair-haired and strict.

No. The problem was something he sensed every day. Something he couldn’t understand or name. It was something unspoken and almost invisible and evil. Something I couldn’t quantify to approach the school about. Something that happened when I wasn’t there to protect him.  Something I couldn’t fix.

 

A few years later, when he was subjected to persistent harassment and bullying at his next school —including having an image of a beautiful Asian woman left in his locker accompanied by a note to ask if he’d started saving for his sex change yet— I went to the school to report it.

Kids will be kids, I was told. The boy responsible had no idea he was being offensive. He thought he was being funny. He’s just a child. You’re being over-sensitive.

And then the boy’s mother spread the word to the other parents to stay away from us: “Be careful of that family. If anything happens that they don’t like, they play the racist card.”

The authorities told me the same thing at yet another school when Miss 14 was only in Grade 6 and one of her peers began to regularly chant at her:

“Ching-Chong China

 She has a big vagina.”

We were assured that the taunter had no idea this was offensive.

My daughter was forced to explain to the other child why it upset her.

She has never bothered to report further instances of racism to the school since.

She is tired of having to be the living example for the lesson of the day about how families differ, about adopted kids and their real families. She’s sick of hearing how she and her brother look so alike when they don’t. They don’t look even remotely similar.  Except that they’re both Korean-Australians. 

 

It’s now more than 45 years since Jane Elliott stirred up uncomfortable controversy with her Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise after the murder of Martin Luther King Jnr affected her so deeply that she was moved to take action against bigotry and racism. That act of hate motivated Jane Elliott to commit her life’s work to making young people see how deeply programmed and emotionally charged our world-views are. And to open their eyes to how hurtful and damaging that can be. Even if it made them uncomfortable. Even if people hated her for it.

And all these years later, videos of her work still circulate on sites like Upworthy  and their power has not dissipated. They still divide, surprise and inflame. 

I shared the video below recently with Miss 14 when she was upset about yet another ‘innocent’ reference to her ‘exotic’ appearance. And a particular moment resonated very deeply with her. And me too.

Often, people believe they are demonstrating how open-minded and accepting they are when they say to my adopted Korean children: ‘But I don’t see you as Asian or adopted.”

Why not?

Being Korean and adopted is integral to who my children are, critical to their identity.

What those well-meaning people do not understand is that they are, in effect, saying: “ I don’t see you as Korean, I see you as Caucasian Australian – just like me.”

I don’t know how that sounds to you, but to me, and to Jane Elliott, it sounds like entrenched racism. The sort that’s so far beneath the surface of best intentions and good will that the only people who see it are the ones who feel it as a constant ache. A hurt that some would label over-sensitivity.

Perspective.

How we see things.

Colourblindness.

Blind spots.

They’ve been on my mind this week.
What about you?
 Did anything change the way you see?

( ... almost 10 minutes in you'll find the conversation that resonated)