Hieronymous the Anonymous

Hot snags

I went out last Friday night to catch up with friends for drinks and dinner. That's a pretty normal event in my life, but last Friday there were a couple of things that made it a little different.

We started at Collins Quarter, which once upon a time used to be Doc Martins. One way or another there's been a bar there for 15 years or more. It's a great venue, a front bar that opens out into a broad courtyard serviced by the back bar and a cosy area upstairs from it. Back in the day when it was Docs tradition was every Friday night they would barbecue sausages in the courtyard for patrons to eat in slices of fresh bread. It was one of my regular haunts at one stage - when I worked at Vic Super and Shell - and I had many a hot snag on a sultry and decadent Friday night.

I was a younger man then, though, I guess, haven't really changed that much since - maybe I'm a little less wild. I've been to both incarnations of the bar many times over the years and remembering that standing there on Friday night it suddenly struck me that was the venue I'd 'picked up' more successfully than any other. That was definitive, but thinking back it seemed pretty likely.

Back in the day I recall many a depraved evening shared with similar minded people. You're young and pretty, you have booze in your system, lust in your heart and the sky seems a pretty inadequate limit. I had forgotten most of it, but much came back: pashing with girls I knew, or girls I didn't. Ardent, innuendo laden flirtation that flared often into insistent passion. Man, I felt awfully nostalgic remembering. I reckon I picked maybe 6-8 girls from there over the years and took them home.

We went to dinner afterwards. We went to another similarly full of nostalgic memory for me: Lucattini's.

I must have first gone to Lucattini's 25 years ago. It would have been with dad and his wife, a favourite restaurant of theirs. I remember a waiter and a short, round waiter, both Italian, both a lot of fun. Over the years I've been back many times, but often with a big break in between. At some point the fat waiter disappeared; now the tall waiter has similarly gone: 25 years is a long time.

The restaurant is at the end of a small laneway off Little Bourke street. It's unpretentious, but comfortable. The food is fine without being exceptional. In truth it's not as good as it used to be, but it remains one of those Italian family restaurants that engender loyalty and fond memories in its patrons.

The meal we had was fine. At the end of it Cheeseboy and I both asked for the Zabaglione. It's not on the memory, but I've always had it there, and we two once had a splendid night there topped off by the delicious dessert.

Of course said the waiter, and soon we were both eating from parfait glasses the warm, liquid, Marsala laden custard. We went to pay and he waved us off - it wasn't on the menu after all - but we tipped him $20 nonetheless. Worth every cent.

Remembering Keith Chambers

Image via Wikipedia

Because we were all busy yesterday one way or another we had a Mother's Day dinner on Saturday night. We went to a family-friendly Mexican restaurant down Swan Street way which was typically boisterous. The boys argued, Schae wandered around, mum drank too much, my sister played mediator and I either teased the boys and Schae, or tuned out. Amid the activity and the food there were the usual sort of conversations, often led by mum. On one occasion she somehow got to talk about bullying and how she hoped the boys would bnever abide it. And then she told a story about me.

I'm at the stage of my life when I tend to roll my eyes at the stories told of me as a kid. I've heard most of them a couple of hundred times, though mum never tires of repeating them - often to the girls I'm with. On Saturday night she told a story I had almost forgotten. I'll record it here because it is part of my history and I should do so before I forget it again.

When I was a kid I was cute as a button. I was teachers pet a few times because I was cute and smart and maybe a little cheeky. I also had an attitude that belied my looks. My first school was Thornbury Primary School. At that time the great majority of students there had Italian, Greek or Lebanese parents. Skips were in a minority, and a kid like me with fair-skin, freckles and reddish-brown hair stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I don't know if that obvious difference influenced my behaviour, but I already had runs on the board. At kindergarten I was the first kid to ever get under the building, and it was quite an effort to extract me. At school I was one of the tougher kids, not averse to the rough and tumble of the playground and, to be honest, quite happy to exert my will on those less determined.

Then on one day - I must have been no more than 6 or 7 - I was walking home from school when I spotted a kid from my year being set upon by a group of other kids. He was not a kid I had much to do with - he was a little plump and clearly unathletic, always neatly dressed I can't look back now without somehow associating him with Humpty Dumpty. Even all these years later I can see him clearly, and that first moment remains vivid. The kid - Keith Chambers as mum recalled so clearly on Saturday - was a born schoolyard victim: a little soft and uncertain, clever, but without the protective veneer needed to get by ruthless kids.

I was different, clearly so it seems now, though I knew no better then. It was instinct then, or some automatic response that drew me into the fray. I don't recall thinking about it, and I doubt a second thought crossed my mind. What happened next is strangely vague to me, but it became clear that I saved Keith and earned his undying gratitude. Did I fight the other kids? Probably - it's certainly the sort of thing I would have done.

That night my mum received a call from Keith's mum. Keith had obviously told the story and his mother had called to thank me. We were invited over, and went. Doubtless there was some heartfelt gratitude expressed to me, but I don't recall that. Rather I recall the happy Keith taking me into his confidence and showing me his Barrel of Monkey's (big then), which I was intrigued by.

That was the story my mum told Saturday, or an abbreviated version of it. Most of it went over the kids head, but I found myself ruminating on it as a lost fragment come back to me. Mum told the story to explain how bullying should not be tolerated, and that's a very worthy point to make. I wonder though how much of that was in my head back then. Was I so virtuous? I think my motivation was more straight-forward - a kid I knew was outnumbered by kids I didn't know. My intervention was based on evening up an unfair contest and, I think, a hunger for the battle. Even then I was combative.

I wonder what has become of Keith? He'll have done well I think, steering his way between conflicts to make a respectable career and to raise his own family. I wonder if he remembers the day I came to his aid?

Life happens

One of my first jobs of any substance was working at a bank. I was taken in amongst a bunch of others to be processed and spat out by a program they had. The idea was that recruits would enter the organisation, progress through different areas after a few months stint learning the ropes, before finally exiting the sausage machine as a well-rounded banking professional.

I make it sound it clinical, but it wasn't really. I learned a lot there, but also had a lot of fun. It was a different era and the shenanigans we got up to by todays standards pretty impressive. We were young and hungry most of us, we had that youthful appetite for experience and adventure - which we found in some abundance - and all of us expected great things. When I look back I smile at some of the mischief I was involved in and shake my head at the general decadence of the time, amplified as it was in the banking environment. Times have moved on, but I took a lot from the experience and made friends I still see today.

I never completed the program. I stayed just under two years before finding myself in unexpected conflict with management. They wanted one thing, I wanted another. To my surprise I arced up and told them so, digging my heels in when they put the squeeze on. My colleagues wartched on as the battle of wills played out. I was given quiet support by my mates, seen as I was as a bit of a test case representative of them all - if they could do this to me they could to it to anyone. I'd always been independently minded, but till then was unaware of how stubborn and outspoken I could be - I earned the nick-name of punching bags from that episode.

In the end I left and fell on my feet with a much better job and the rest is very interesting history.

On Wednesday last week I caught up for lunch with the two guys I was probably closest to back in the day. I see Royston for lunch and a beer every 6 months or so. He is as he ever was, famously affable and easy-going, a smart man in an amiable persona. Paul I see only every few years or so randomly. Back then he appeared on the scene as an exotic putsider, short and good looking, beautifully dressed always with a copy of The Face in his brief case. He had long dark hair and his feautures a vaguely oriental cast to them - one of his grandmother's was Chinese. In the rough and tumble of the banking environment he stood apart, slightly uncomfortably often.

By contrast Roy and I were in the thick of things, joining the bank booze culture, flirting with the typists, dissecting the round of football every week, and generally working hard to play hard. Somehow Paul joined us.

That's many years ago now and we have all gone our separate ways since. Roy now works for a German bank as their Australian representative. Paul remains with the bank where he started, though now in a much more senior role. Of the three of us I'm the only one to have left the iudustry, and while Paul has had the one job for all this time I have had a multitude. I remain, as I was then, the maverick of the group. Strange how early we are defined and how true it becomes.

We sat down for a meal Wednesday and remembered old times and the people we used to work with: where are they now? It seemed remarkable that so much time had passed - was it really that long? We were young then, fresh for want of a better word. Now I guess you'd call us pretty seasoned, been around the traps a while, know pretty much who we are, what we're capable, have a fair idea of what we want. We've all progressed down our chosen paths, have all achieved senior positions in one sense or another. So you sit there, you laugh, you recall past memories and faces now faded into oblivion, the talk shifts to now, to a form of shoptalk, about Basel 3 (over my head), about present challenges and events. An you wonder how the three of us, older, wiser, greyer, all now approaching middle-age, went from where we were then to now. Sitting there you trace the path back thinking, so, that's how you do it. Or is it?

It was a fun occasion, good for all of us and rich in nostalgia. We are are each a reminder of our youth to each other. We'll do it again soon, gladly, and it will be different because it wont be as novel.

How it was before I remember

Now that I'm home for the moment I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on a long list of housekeeping items. Last night it was about sorting through old photos in a box and putting them into an album.

I should have anticipated the nostalgic impact of the job. Initially I sorted through the photo's - ranging between 1980 to 2000 - quite methodically, sorting them into piles, discarding the dud pics and highlighting the good one's. Occasionally I would pause to recollect a place or moment, sometimes scratching my head as if it was a life I was unfamiliar with. Mostly I just moved along.

There came a point though when it was more than just a task to complete. I came across a sheaf of photo's from a birthday party for mum at the old Maxim's in South Yarra, plush and elegant. There was a roomful of family and friends and the photo's showed them happy, smiling, laughing, in mid-conversation. As I sorted through them I realised that a few there vibrant and happy have since passed on, and that my own mother, which the pictures showed as healthy, is soon to join them.

I came across a batch of older photo's then, from the mid-eighties. When I look back now that time seems a different world, but looking at the photo's it seemed fresh and current, as if they might have been taken in the next room. Of course my mother was there, much younger, her hair stylish and still with many adventures ahead of her. So to was my sister, a girl still just about, unmarried, motherhood a distant possibility.

The photo's piled up of different times and places. There were many occasions when I struggled to remember where the place was, or what I was doing there. Many times too there were occasions when I'd pause and smile at a happy memory, a funny moment captured on film. Even amongst my own friends I observed the changes, the friends come and gone, the fading in and out of people in different places. Sad to know that dear friends - one I was best man for - have now disappeared (though I had another ring me yesterday out of the blue inviting me to his wedding).

There was me too at different stages of my life. I'm pretty camera shy, and so the photos of me are less common - besides, generally I'm at the other side of the camera. Still I was there in stages, like stop motion popping up tthrough the years. There I am out fishing; there I am in dinner suit out for NYE; there smiling with mum. It was strange to see myself, particularly when young. One photo I looked at unable to reconcile it as being me. I felt like a different person.

I noted other things that had never entered my head before. In some of the photos, particularly of me in my early twenties, I look Nordic in a way I had never realised. I might be a Swede or a German or a Dane with my blonde hair and husky build. In other photos I observed my physicality like I hadn't before, tall I was, rangy in many of the photos, more handsome than I remembered.

Out of it all I felt a sepia tinged melancholy. Melancholy is the emotion of the season, no escaping that, and looking into past lives here and gone that feeling was deepened, and somehow burnished by remembrance. I felt the flow of time that for some - for all - comes to an inevitable stop no matter what has come before.

What you remember

Memories are like scraps of paper blown randomly across your way by the breeze. Every so often a headline catches your eye before the wind picks it up again and sends it on its way.

It's as random as that mostly, though sometimes the memories are fed by the events of your life. Things happen, the scraps of paper come from the one place, connected in some way by a common thread. It's as if some archivist in your mind works silently and secretly picking up the cues and feeding back the disparate but linked moments of a barely remembered past.

I think much less about mum's situation than I did a month or two ago, though there is a constant awareness that at some point the end will come. For now I have managed an uneasy adjustment to the situation. While I think less, I remember more. As if knowing that soon there will be no more new memories my mind has sought out the old and dusty one's.

It's strange what you remember. You might think that particular occasions are recalled. Key moments in your shared life. But no, not yet, not for me anyway. I recall figments, truly scraps of memories as if torn from larger memories. They come unexpectedly, passing through my mind much as a piece of old newspaper might blow across the street. Sometimes I might linger over these memories, curious again, my foot on the corner of the paper to prevent it blowing away. And then I move on and the wind does its work.

I recalled my mother of the seventies when I was a boy. I remembered in general the parties my parents would have in our home in Lower Plenty, how the Conolly's and the Holton's would visit for a raucous night of free-spirited enjoyment, the wine and beer flowing, Barry White, Neil Diamond (Hot August Night), the Bee Gees playing, and the ribald laughter of the men. We kids, now all grown up and responsible, had our own party which was fun then and fun remembering. I recall mum in all of this, most particularly I remember how she was, an attractive, vibrant woman, her hair permed stylishly in the fashion of the day, the born hostess in her very element.

Another memory comes to me. This one is very prosaic, so much so that you wonder how it can be recalled now, why, in fact, it was stored away in the first instance. There it is nonetheless, and you find something fond in the very ordinariness of the memory: of queuing up in a technical book shop with all these mother's with their children looking to source the school years book list. That was somewhere in the city, and though I can't say where I can close my eyes and can picture the scene.

How does this make me feel? Sad, predictably, though not necessarily in the way you would think. Back then I was dependent on my mum, and I her much loved son. I was held within the warm routine of family, though I took hardly any notice of that. I had a close relationship with my mum.

The relationship must, I guess, change and mature as you yourself mature and become independent. To some degree the shoe is on the other foot. Mum is not dependent upon me, but she leans hard, and did so even before her illness. I'm happy for that to be the case, but in recalling this hatful of old memories I am wistful for what I have lost, lost whether she lives or dies.

We were closer once; our relationship was different; I wish she was as she was then, and not is as she is now. She probably thinks the same of me. What I feel then is regret. Things always change, we lose a little, we gain a little. I'm not sure how possible it is to hold onto some of these things: is it just time that makes them slip from your grasp?

Mum is dying, and that's hard. She has been good with it, but if I am to be selfish and self-indulgent for a moment I wish she was that vibrant woman of yesteryear still. I miss her to a poignant degree. She exists only in those scrap of memories now.

Keeping it to myself

I revisited those lost posts this morning. It was by design or intention - the file was open, I clicked on it and there it was. I read it more thoroughly today. The other day when I discovered it I felt a reluctance to dig too deep, afraid, I think, of what I might stir up. Today I was much more matter of fact. I read and remembered. I was pleased at how honest I had been. I felt a passing regret, sad that things had not turned out differently.

It's always interesting to look back with hindsight at the words written in the middle of something. Reading now you have the benefit of knowing how things turned out; in the middle of writing it is all hope and wonder. It's doubly interesting when the words are secret - the posts you chose not to publish because they were too sensitive or close to the bone, and then forgot.

In the days since I've discovered these 'lost' posts I've been wavering in one direction and then the other as to whether I should now make them public. The argument for claims the record is incomplete, and possibly even skewed, without them. And if I am to be honest, then there should be no exceptions.

I'm not that honest though. There are things that happen in my life that will never see the light of day. That's fair too. I'm a man, not an open book, no matter how candid I try to be.

My reluctance to publish, I told myself, was for fear of unnecessarily raking up old news. Sounds good, but whether I publish or not the news has been raked over in the reading of these things. If I could go back and insert these posts where they belong in November and December of 2006 then I would do so happily, completing the record. I can't do that though, and to drop them in here now, nearing 2011, is to do so without context. They don't belong in the here and now.

That may be my official reason for not publishing them. Unofficially the reason is slightly different. More than anything it is a feeling in my stomach telling me I have no right to do so. It's a strange thought considering I have tried to publish here without fear or favour, but it holds true. It might have been right then because it was all around me and in, this was the time, these were the events, this is what I felt and thought and tormented myself with.

That was well and good then. Times have moved on. No-one who was there then now reads this blog as far as I know, but that's irrelevant. There's another person involved. Once we were linked together, now no longer. Doubtless she has gone on with her life, happily I hope, and much of this now forgotten. It would be self-indulgent of me now to publish these posts. It may be my blog and my life, but I have to be true to my principles.

Does that make any sense?

Ghosts of Christmas parties past

It was Christmas party weekend. I had two to go to, one for each client, but given my diatribe the other day opted to give one the miss. That left the party on Friday night.

As Christmas parties go it was pretty tame and unremarkable. It was at some so-so venue at Docklands where the usual Christmas party activities occurred to some degree: lots of drinking, a bit of dancing, and possibly the odd shenanigan - though I'm guessing fewer than ideal, and certainly none involving me. I'm a good boy these days.

I caught a tram home near to 1. A few others kicked on elsewhere, but the low-key nature of the event didn't inspire me to party on. I wasn't even particularly pissed.

The tram had the usual late-night players, supplemented possibly by the spillover from countless Christmas parties around town. I sat by the window at the back of the tram and cast a somewhat jaundiced eye over my fellow-travelers. It's a familiar journey regardless of destination, but easy to forget that I too belong somewhere in that picture.

My mind dwelled briefly on the events of the night, before pushing on. Not surprisingly I recalled past Christmas parties, many of which were memorable in all the usual ways. I wasn't always a good boy and have over the journey found myself tired and emotional, returning home the next day, or indulging in some of the aforementioned shenanigans. Good times!

The Christmas party that lingered most in my mind was from a few years back when things weren't so flash. That was when Amy and I were in the middle of one of our cold wars and I was given the cold shoulder at some venue in Brunswick. I remember the night vividly though I sometimes mess up the chronology of the events surrounding it.

I was there with Donna as my date, unsure in many ways of what to expect. To my surprise Amy came alone and right from the start made it clear she wanted nothing to do with me. I can't remember why now, though surely in those eventful days there was good reason. I felt it tear at me, dismayed more for her than I was for myself. I didn't want to be the cause of such tribulation, though there was probably a part of me thrilled by it. I wanted to count for something.

Donna left and somehow I stayed on. Looking back I think there must have been a perverse fascination that kept me there. I remember Amy angrily brushing past me as I tried to talk to her, remember another girl taking me aside to detail how much trouble I was in. I was shocked, angered, but I stayed on. Why? Because I cared and despite the worst of things you always hope. What a sap I was, but I understand it.

The next day we exchanged emails. And by the middle of the following week we were friends again, for the last time, sharing our time together and venturing out for one of our steak meals. Funny, those days seem very strong in me for the moment. I dreamt of Amy last week, but that's not it I think; and I don't think it's the reminder that Christmas has prompted me with.

It may seem strange, but I think it's the cricket. I remember with my colleagues then watching the last overs of the Adelaide test match when the English were last here. That was a remarkable match and a remarkable win that left all us staunch Aussies buzzing. That evening I recall carting a bunch of salads with Amy from the office to the Labour in Vain, where we had a steak meal on the rooftop in the sunshine amid much laughter and celebration. I remember that, and from that I have dreamt I think, and recalled the times leading up to it. Fair enough - it all went sour afterwards.

Waning suns

I speak to mum daily, and often several times a day. Yesterday we spoke 4-5 times, largely about her will. She is finalising it before seeing the solicitor today I think, in what must be a pretty surreal experience.

Surreal sums up a lot of the situation right now. By and large mum appears well. I had dinner and with my step-sister down from Queensland last Tuesday. While much of the conversation touched upon mum's condition and prognosis, there were no outward signs of it. Mum has all the usual aches and pains that come from age, but aside from a slightly altered voice she is fine.

That's going to change. We know that, the question I guess is when. No-one can tell that with any confidence. It's hard to believe that 3 months is it, or even 6. We hope for the best and with some of the treatment proposed it may be longer than that. I'm sceptical about all, not because I don't believe, but because I don't want to believe too much. Too presume anything is dangerous to a healthy state of mind.

You find yourself thinking. Death, though it seems so remote, is amongst you. You can't help but think back to other times. In my case I recall my uncle to some degree, and more particularly my aunt, both of whom died young from cancer.

What is highlighted is the transitory nature of life. Nothing is forever no matter how it may seem that at the time. The sun sets. Time flows on, it twists, it surges and ebbs and ultimately it comes to an end.

I have such vivid memories implanted in my mind. In the mid-eighties I lived for a time with my aunt in her apartment in Watsons Bay. My memories are of sunshine, of ferries scudding across the harbour visible from the front room of her elevated pad. Each weekend we would go down to Gibsons Beach opposite with the thick weekend papers. We would have fresh croissants and in the evening a G&T. Through the week I would sometimes pop in on her where she worked for years as the CEO's PA. I remember the wood panelling and the kind people there.I remember in those days a girl I quite fancied, Kate Fleming, and her home down by the waters edge.

And so on. I was young then and full of everything, but my aunt wasn't too much older - just a generation. Her lifestyle was not the healthiest, but not for a moment did I think it would end. The days seem forever when you're young, and even often when you're older. There world is a place of infinite possibility - or so it seems.

Then I recall how my uncle died, wasted away, tragic, abandoned by his kids. And my aunt, ravaged by cancer that left her a frail wisp of a woman, her mind drifting as her body failed her. As we looked on, helpless.

In times like this you catch a glimpse at the full range of life, not just in scope and time, but also possibility - good and bad and sometimes capricious. Everything ends, no matter how brightly the sun once shone. It leads me to conclude two things: to lead a good life you can be proud of with no regrets; and to die well, with dignity and composure.

Dislocations

I was going to write about this last week, but never did. There are things that you want to report on and those that you feel some obligation to. I didn’t record this last week because it was not really something I wanted to delve into more than I had to. It was a bit weak really, a form of burying my head in the sand, but understandable I think. Still, this is one of the things I feel obliged to record for posterity’s sake – it cannot go unannounced. So here I am. 

The funny thing is that at the time there was a part of me recording my impressions. I don’t know if everyone does it, but there is a part of me that seems permanently detached and observing what I do and what I feel and working to make sense of it. I think of it as the part of me that fuels my writing, though I’m unsure whether I do this because I write or if I write because I think like this. I’m very self-aware but it’s part and parcel of who I am. Many times I actually find myself framing the words that will in time describe this moment if I ever choose to commit it to paper. In that sense I am always writing whether anything comes of it or not. 

I’ve taken a long time to get to the point of this post, but it seems important to put it into the context of where I’m at with my life. It is about my mum and her condition. For her it’s a life-threatening situation, and much more besides. For the rest of us around her it is many things besides. She is at the centre, the focus of all of this, but from her their radiates people and emotions and different perspectives on something that is scary, confusing, sometimes frustrating, and above all really, mysterious. That’s the context. 

Last Thursday I got a message that the results of the PET scan on my mum had revealed another cancerous tumour  in a different part of her body. This was clearly bad news. I got the message via my sister; my mum was somewhere else, but quite upset at it. We talked a little and then I put down the phone. It’s tempting to resort to one of the customary clichés. The news didn’t take the breath from me, not literally, but it had something of that effect on me. I felt hollowed out if that makes any sense. I had a feeling of numbness again faced with might be terminal news. As before I felt a little fuzzy too, a descriptor that probably doesn’t make sense to anyone reading this, but it felt the exact word for it. 

I did another search on the internet, but it only really confirmed what I knew before: that a cancer metastasised is bad news. Is that what this is though? How do doctors categorise this after all? I read on, a therapeutic reaction to the news more than a practical help. Could this be cervical cancer? Or even ovarian? I told myself not to jump to conclusions. There was no point worrying about things I couldn’t understand. 

At lunch I went for a walk. I felt removed from most of my surroundings. Through the morning I felt as if I had gone through the motions by rote. I was not in them, not part of them; when I looked at the screen I saw what was there, I read my emails and examined spreadsheets, but I felt not really there. Around me people went about their normal business, when spoken to I responded no differently to I ever did – I just didn’t turn to speak to others. I felt as if whoever was really me had fled to a high tower inside me. There I was, while the rest of me did what it did. 

As is so often the case I found myself in a bookshop in my lunch hour. They have always been a refuge for me. I wandered between shelves of books. I picked some up and put them down. I took in the books noting what I might want to buy at some future date. At the same time part of my mind was locked on mum feeling as I have described above. And a part of me was recording all of it like a dispassionate scientist.

There was a Dionne Warwick CD being played as background music. I had hardly noticed it until with a start I ‘heard’ The Girl From Ipanema. My mum loves Dionne Warwick – in fact she is seeing her in a couple of weeks – but the song has no real meaning. On this occasion though it sparked a litany of unexpected thoughts and emotions. 

Your mother is your mother. To her children that is her identity. That is how she is forever seen, how she is defined. It’s rare we ever see her from any other perspective. We know, perhaps, that other perspectives exist, but they hardly ever occur to us. It may be lazy or maybe even smug, but there seems little reason for it. It’s a sign perhaps of how much we take our mother for granted. 

Hearing that song jolted me into a different perspective. I was taken back to a time before I was even born. I know a lot of mum’s stories and so found myself recalling some of them. First was how she was lying on a beach in Sydney when JFK was assassinated. She tells the story of how someone said ‘Kennedy’s dead’ and she automatically thought Graham Kennedy. 

That little story had me seeing her as she might have been then. Like the girl from Ipanema perhaps she was in her swimsuit living the good life lying in the sun. She was young, not long married and with a lot ahead of her. Somewhere in the future there was me and my sister, and she must have wondered about that, imagined what her life might be. She was a woman, a person in her own right, living as I do now, not a mother, not even a wife really though technically she was, but someone with the usual uncertain view of the world ahead. 

Later she might have listened to Dionne Warwick sing the song on radio and sung along to it as was her habit when I grew up. I’ll lay short odds that at some point in the late sixties she did just that. The photos I’ve seen remnants of which remain in my memory came to life as I looked back: my father, impossibly young looking, but handsome, and the Holden they had shades of grey in the black and white pics and my mum dressed in the fashion of the day in tight checked pants and smiling – and me. I am there too, another version of me anyway, a baby and small boy, my parents clearly proud of me as I look obliviously at the camera. That was a time, a place – it was a space that existed, and I shared that space with them, joining me and from this year to that connecting in my mind. It was like seeing things in 3D. 

The afternoon passed and I felt much the same way for the rest of the day. I felt as if I had been frivolous in the days before, but then excused it, you live and you squeeze as much enjoyment out of it as you can. There are times to be frivolous, and times not. So it goes. 

The next day, Friday, I had adjusted. It’s as if overnight the knob is cranked a little more to the right. That’s the new reality, uncertain as it may be, and within 24 hours you have conditioned yourself to it. Things aren’t as good as they were 48 hours before, but that’s as it is. This is now and so you accept it and move on. It’s not all lost, hope lives on, and ultimately for all the bleak that is what you remember. Today, now, anything is possible.
 

Before it goes

Image via Wikipedia

I caught up with my dad while I was in Sydney. As we have before we caught up first at the German bar in O’Connell Street where I drank a couple of cold German beers in tall steins. We moved on after to Martin Place and the basement of the old GPO, now the food hall of the Hotel Westin. We each had a pizza, a few glasses of wine, and continued on our wide ranging conversations.

As always we discussed politics. Though we are vaguely positioned on opposing sides of the centre we found plenty to agree on. This is often the case. Though politics is all about spin we’re both cynical enough to see through it – as are most Australians, by the way – to the facts. On most of the basic facts we find little to disagree about. Where we differ, when we differ, is in our expectations. We can agree mostly on what is wrong, what is bad, but will have different ideas on what is right, what should be. In any case we could both agree, as most Australians do judging by the state of the polls, that the local political situation is deplorable.

Our conversation ranged across the family, my sister mainly and her kids, and to some small degree my mother and his ex. As always he listened keenly, taking in everything with interest and asking of me questions that went to the heart of the situation. He spoke without judgement and with a broad perspective, open to opinions on things he knew little about. He spoke with some affection of a woman he has been seeing, but not once did we discuss my relationships – we never do.

As always he was curious about my work and let himself go at times to make assertions about my manager or the work situation I had described to him. He has a wealth of experience at the top of the tree. Unlike most these days he got there by pure dint of his effort allied with native intelligence. He was not a graduate of university; instead he went into the work force and was general manager at 21. This experience gives authority to the words he pronounces with such confidence.

In me he sees, I think, some surrogate of him. This is not terribly unusual, and in him these days it is pretty benign. It wasn’t always the way. At one point our relationship was almost competitive, though that came mainly from me. I was one of those sons looking to match his father, if not usurp him. To this an edge was added by a relationship that was occasionally belligerent. It was his nature to push. He knew no other speed than full ahead. It was my nature to resist, and then to push back myself. It’s ironic that this very similarity in our natures was the wedge that pushed us apart.

It’s not like that now. We are both easier. He always expected a lot of me and was occasionally a harsh critic as I strived: harsher for being my father. I think he believes now that I have achieved something on my own: I have earned his respect. For my part I am a lot more relaxed about the relationship in general. I no longer feel I have something to prove.

And so it is now that dad takes an avid and curious interest in my work. He wants to know what is going on. He likes to hear of what I think and what I plan for. His advice when it is given is gently put and sensible. He is careful I think not to get in my way, but there is the sense that he approves of who I have become as a man. Work is a good part of that, but the rest is character. He has managed sometimes against big odds and through tough times; as I have now too. We have both remained true to our self, and this is something we now share.

I looked at him at one point on Tuesday thinking that one day he will be no more. He is nearing 70, but there is the sense that he will go on for long time yet. He looks 60, if that, a handsome man with, I’m surmising, some of that quality I wrote of earlier. My mother always makes mention of what a good looking man he was, and in photos of him then he seems something of a cross between Tony Curtis and Mel Gibson. That’s a strange thought considering there is a clear resemblance between us, yet I look nothing like them. Sitting there he looks back at me with clear, intelligent blue eyes. His face is slightly red, he has a dark moustache with filaments of silver through it, much like the full head of hair on his head. These days there is something more of Errol Flynn in his later years.

Growing up dad always seemed taller than what he appears now, and perhaps he was. He is trim, and in the manner of his generation, well dressed. He is in a black and white sports jacket over a black woollen turtle neck jumper. He is 5’8’ I think, maybe 5’9”, and this is where we really differ. Though I seem of him I am a much larger version. I am nearly a head taller and built like a heavy-weight boxer. There seems something incongruous as we walk besides each other, or even as we sit across from the other.

His mind is still razor sharp, his curiosity and appetite undiminished by the years. Is he the smartest person I know? I’m not sure. What he has is the best applied mind I have come across. By that I mean he has the great facility of reasoning through a situation, of forensically stripping away the extraneous to reveal the underlying logic and rationale, and ultimately the resolution. His mind seems something big, like a computer that grinds through infinite combinations. Like a computer his weakness, if it is that, is perhaps seeing – or looking for – complexity where it is not. Sometimes things are simple. He remains an impressive intellect, and occasionally an intimidating one I think to those who don’t know him.

He is thoroughly modern in most ways. He is not one of those people for whom time and the unfurling of exciting events pass by. He is fascinated by most things and is always asking questions to understand more. Like me, but like fewer do in recent generations, he reads the daily broadsheet from front cover to back. Information is vital to him, and he wonders aloud how people who don’t read the paper or watch the news can cope. What they don’t know they don’t miss – but I wonder to, why?

Looking at him I recall the stories of him. Of he was a tearaway when a teenager, rebelling for the sake of it. A story my grandmother used to tell was how he threw the boots of Arthur Calwell’s son on the railway tracks at school. Another time the police came knocking on the door in connection to a car stolen by his friends. He was a cyclist good enough to be selected in the Olympics, but broke his leg on the track at the wrong time. He was famous for being attracted to, and attractive, to women.

Looking at him I remembered stories from my own youth. I remember one rowdy party where he and his mates drunkenly stripped, flinging their undies on the roof of the house and racing in the pool. We kids were delighted. There was another story of a party at our house where the husband of a friend of mums told dad he was an arsehole. I had always thought this was said in jest, but no, it was a drunken comment seriously intended, so that one of dad’s friends intervened threatening to knock this character's block off. I remembered too how we would go to the football each week, listening to Captain Blood on the radio to and from, parking on the centre nature strip in Napier Street and sitting in the Reynolds stand through the seventies and eighties cheering on the team.

A life and a character, that’s what it boils down to, as it does to me, and to everyone else. Revolving doors, his, mine, time passing and memories, the things we did and hoped on and worked for, the highs, the lows, the dramas, the relationships. For me and him we’re linked, father and son, rolling onward.

We parted, shook hands, in his gruff way he told me it was good to see me, and we went our separate ways. I just wanted to record something because one day all this will be gone.