Growing together

It's my daughter's 18th birthday today and I'm prompted to reflect

One of the wonderful aspects of being a parent is seeing those glimpses of personalities in little babies develop through childhood and blossom into adulthood.  

There are so many lessons that one learns about themself in the process, particularly that opportunity to revisit memories of one's own childhood from a new perspective.

I found a new gratitude for my parents and was able to let go of some painful experiences too.  

A key moment for me in fathering a daughter was recognising my own sexism, which came as a surprise after identifying as a feminist and studying that topic through one of my university degrees. 

It came after years of viewing my daughter with some suspicion, based on what I now see as a resourcefulness to get what she wanted without asking. 

A family member had written letters to each of my three children and, after they were discarded, I looked over them and recognised a distinct shift in tone within the correspondence directed to the girl. 

That prompted me to reflect on how my own interactions had subtle, yet observable, differences that meant I treated my daughter differently to her brothers. 

Over time I worked to consider my attitudes and address the perception that I might be unconsciously sexist in my behaviour. 

This isn't to say that I don't worry about how the world treats females, particularly how their needs are different, but it was a step toward recognising I wanted her to retain those capabilities and strengths that had been previously a source of conflict. 

In psychology they identify positive and negative conditioning as ways of shaping behaviours, and I guess I'm trying to articulate that the opportunity to be a father to a daughter helped me to recognise a broader range of strategies in parenting. 

There's more I can write about identifying my biases, but for now I want to conclude with gratitude for seeing another child reach adulthood and how my capacity for love has grown. 

Fatherly advice

Saw this online yesterday and shared it on Facebook

I have been surprised at the number of friends who liked the post and some went on to share it.

It reminded me when my oldest started school and said he couldn't talk with other students.

My fatherly advice was to compliment them on something as an opening gambit and to this day he will often start a conversation by telling me that I have a great shirt or something.

As much as I'd like to share that I heard it first from my father, that lesson was one taught to me by Lunarbaboon and I think it's worth sharing.
 

Gradations with u

Normally I hate graduations and have skipped them whenever I can

There's long been a sense for me that they're fake and, while wanting to be well-meaning, they offer empty platitudes with small slices of bland sandwiches after a flavourless ceremony.

Maybe that speaks more to my own experience, as it probably began when I spoke as Chair of the School Board at my graduation and then went on unemployment benefits for four years rather than finding a world of opportunity.

Then, four years after finally accessing the financial support to study, I refused to wear a gown to my uni graduation and found that lots of people told me that I looked better for dressing differently.

It was an experience that might have hardened my aloofness and desire to be distinct from whatever everyone else was doing, which honestly mightn't have worked out so well in the long run.

I've changed careers a handful of times and it feels like that restlessness has been speeding up.

If there's one thing that's kept a sense of regularity since I stopped owning a dog, it has been being a parent.

This role has provided so many opportunities to revisit those difficult memories of being a child and find a new perspective that's sympathetic toward my own parents.

Therapy would have been cheaper and now I wonder if my own children will begrudge me for moments of selfishness or recognise the struggle to keep sane as obligations multiply and come into conflict with our lives together?

Anyway, today I went to my child's graduation ceremony and came away with a very different experience.

My daughter wasn't the first of my kids to finish high school, so I didn't have the shock of wondering why her class was so small.

At our regional high school it seems more than half the class will leave at the end of Year 10 to find jobs, apprenticeships or maybe they move away for opportunities in a city.

My daughter didn't get singled out for achievements, although academically she is as capable as her older brother, who was awarded cash prizes at previous ceremonies that I'd been dragged along to watch.

The Principal spoke predictably about how this class of students arrived five years earlier as children and were now leaving as young adults.

Ha, I thought, what a world they’ve got to find their way through.

Then she recognised that something significant happened in Year Eight, when everyone had been forced to learn how to study online.

There was a worldwide pandemic that saw the stocks of Zoom rise and gave me a firsthand observation of how differently my children approached their studies.

My oldest child struggled without the face-to-face opportunities to be assured he understood the expectations of an assessment.

My youngest seemed to get everything finished within an hour and spent the rest of the day in Minecraft.

My daughter, a middle child, was often so quiet as to be unnoticed.

She would retreat to her bedroom and I began to recognise her resourcefulness, as she never asked for assistance and clearly had observed that Google had all the answers.

When I enquired about assessments she showed me how a group of friends negotiated in a messaging application to divide the workload.

I saw this chat group was named "Boomer remover" and callously admired the dark humour as the casualties began to rise.

Now at her graduation, I listened to people occasionally coughing around me and wondered if I was going to catch COVID again.

Many don’t acknowledge the pandemic continues.

My reflections were disrupted by movement on the stage as the speeches that blah-ed in the background came to lull.

A couple were moving with long hair that looked like something from a time before I had hair of my own.

A young man with a mullet, then a young woman took to the podium with flat long flowing centre-parted hair, that's the style of the day again it seems.

Young Mullet recounted how they'd been told they were the worst Year Seven in 25 years, while Centre-Part spoke about how they had been able to observe changes in their year advisor as he found love and got married.

There was a weird sense that something shifted in me, as I realised the kids had been watching as the world stopped and was restarted.

They had likely also wondered if anyone knew what they were doing while a defining moment in our lives entered every house and then was swept aside by the rush to resume regular life.

Often it seems a dissonance to hear people minimising the risk of lifelong debilitation with a phrase like "spicy cough" so their aspirations can fly again to holiday in unimaginative destinations.

And it occurred to me that this is the way of things, like seasons changing, inevitably cycling through changes that feel like gentle progress while really remaining on the spot like pedalling on an exercise bike.

My cynicism concluded that classes keep graduating and people keep standing behind podiums telling people there is something to look forward to.

Then the most unlikely thing happened, the graduating class danced out of the auditorium.

I don't know when choreographed dancing at graduations became a thing and I suspect I might have seen it at a previous ceremony and thought it was naff.

However, today I looked into 41 joyful faces and didn't see a single cynical outsider pretending to go through the moves.

It was remarkable that a group could agree on music, let alone the steps to go with it.

The graduation program listed names of students that I'd been hearing since my daughter joined kindergarten and, as I looked around, the parents' faces I'd known from attending assemblies all looked older.

That's one thing that's different from my schooling, I went to five different schools and my daughter has only known two.

I wondered if this little community in the Riverina had provided something more than being little.

We walked outside into the sunshine to find the students talking excitedly in small groups.

People posed for photos and I had the strangest sensation of excitement for the possibilities these young people have waiting for them.

So much is changing and there have been challenges, yet the kids have grown up and I realised that I had too.

My own relationship with schools is about to be approached from a new angle, as I prepare to enter classrooms as a teacher.

As I reflect on how much I've resented sitting through school assemblies and speeches for decades now, it comes as a shock to realise that I will have opportunities to be that blahing voice at the podium after I graduate.

I hope to have the same enthusiasm and excitement that I have seen on the faces of students.

Maybe I will know that mask-like smile that I see teachers wear during public events at schools.

Or perhaps I should recognise the times have changed and learn to dance?

Time really does move in circles, lapping seasons and ticking over years.

Each revolution brings a new perspective on the next.

I just need to keep learning new moves to stay relevant.

Five Flying Things

Here's a playlist of videos that aim to provide ideas for creative play for carers of children stuck at home

These were produced with assistance from the NSW Government through Create NSW and Western Riverina Arts.

Please click here to see the full series

New couch

For years I've wanted a new couch 

Over a decade I told myself when my kids are old enough, I'll buy a comfy seat for the living room.

About a week ago I decided the time had come.

There was a special on a couch I'd been looking at online and there was money in my bank account.

So I made the order.

The couch arrived last Friday and it sat outside until Saturday, when there were enough hands to help move it inside.

We took off the packaging and screwed in the legs, then placed it where the old futon had been.

Everyone agreed it was an improvement.

Then I made lunch and started reading a book.

Soon I was interrupted by noise in the living room and realised there was panic.

It turned out someone had spilled soft drink on my new couch.

One of the kids was wiping a spot with a wet washcloth.

I yelled for a towel and then felt myself getting angry.

"How is it that it took less than two hours for one of you to spill something on my new couch?!"

They agreed they were both to blame and that they were sorry.

"Didn't I say not to eat or drink on the couch?!"

They agreed I had said not to consume any food or liquids on the couch.

"Seriously! You're idiots!"

They didn't agree but quickly disappeared to their rooms.

It didn't take long for me to clean the drink off.

Later that night, after I'd sat on the new couch and watched a movie, I called the kids into the living room.

"I'm sorry I got angry with you earlier."

They said they understood.

"I can get always another new couch but I want you to know that I love you."

They said they loved me too and we sat on the couch together.

"You don't have to apologise," one of them began.

"Yes, I do," I said. "It's important for me to show you that being angry is temporary."

Sunday nights

On Sunday nights I force my family to sit together in front of a single screen

We share turns picking a film to watch and sometimes I bribe my kids to sit with me by buying snacks.

It’s not always easy but it’s great sometimes.

The film has quickly become secondary to sitting together.

It’s good to throw my arms around the kids.

And it’s magic when I lock eyes with Jo and feel surrounded by love.

Fathers Day

Another year as a parent and I'm prompted to reflect on my role as Fathers Day passes

Many years ago I learned that to be a father was more than donating biological material to a child.

I'd had this idea to write a sensational article about the opportunity to donate sperm and even pitched it to the editor of the student newspaper as important because educated donors could raise the IQ in the general population.

She wasn't impressed, telling me that was eugenics, but encouraged me to write the article.

It was interesting experience and a little unsettling when the hospital told me my sperm count wasn't high enough for them to accept my donation.

Then years later when I fell in love with my partner, I convinced her that we should have children.

The results have been amazing but I won't dwell here on our offspring, because I am convinced that it is an important step in personal development.

There's a shift in one's thinking to accommodate others, that leads to letting go of some ego and opening the heart.

There is also a profound shift in revisiting experiences of the child-parent relationship but this time as the parent.

For me that has involved shifting a lot of resentment that developed in my teenage years.

Those experiences where I felt slighted and even neglected took on a scale proportionate to my self-centred young mind.

In more recent years I've been able to look back and reconsider what might have been going on for my parents at those times.

They were separated and doing what they could.

I can see that my father's emotional distance might have reflected his own relationship to his father.

And now I find myself kinda marvelling at how calmly he managed various situations.

Revisiting a master

It was in my last year of primary school that I became obsessed with Japan

This was informed by an interest in samurai and ninjas but probably laid the groundwork for my haiku writing earlier this century to present day.

Aside from exploring martial arts, reading James Clavell's book Shogun and learning to love eating rice, one of the highlights was watching movies by Akira Kurosawa.

My mother saw the ANU film group were screening his work and kindly drove me to see The Seven Samurai.

I sat next to a couple who seemed to be at the film solely to kiss each other but hardly noticed.

In hindsight I can appreciate the skill of his filmmaking, it held the attention of a boy raised on television cartoons for around three hours of black and white storytelling.

The fight scene at the end is still epic.

However, I've also come to appreciate the influence Kurosawa had on other films.

George Lucas has spoken of the C3PO and R2D2 characters being inspired by two peasants in The Hidden Fortress, and the video below shows other influences from that film.



And when I realised the Italian westerns my father liked were remakes of Kurosawa, I became more interested in them.



This week I tried to interest my kids in watching Yojimbo, priming them with the Youtube videos that make Jedi of Kurosawa's ronin.



They didn't watch much of it but I got a new appreciation for the film.

First, the soundtrack is awesome. I've had the track covered below in my head for days.



Second, the scene with the dog holding a human hand is clearing referenced in my favourite movie of all time: Wild At Heart.



And, finally, my interest in film studies has been stirred by the observation that the formerly fascist countries of Italy and Japan both began making westerns in the decades after World War II.

What does it say about the countries that these films focus on a stranger coming into a lawless town and setting things straight with violence?

Personalities

One of the women at my workplace told a story about how interesting it had been to undertake Myer-Briggs-type personality tests with her kids.

Last weekend I suggested a website to my kids and they were enthralled by the questionnaire.

One son let his pizza go cold while he pondered whether he agreed or disagreed with the statements.

The result wasn't immediately exciting, as three of the four of us shared a result.

Then today, more than a week later, I asked my son what to make of the result and we pondered how best to negotiate a particular personality trait.

Another remarkable sandwich

Toasted banana and chocolate sandwich with my daughter.

Across the park

When I was a boy I took Tae Kwon Do lessons at Woden Library on Tuesday nights.

As my mother was also looking after my sister and my baby brother, she'd ask me to walk home after the lessons. The Library wasn't far from the apartment we were living in at the time, however as the days shortened it became a scary walk in the dark for this boy.

One spot in particular used to frighten me and that was the Melrose Drive underpass. I was thinking about it recently when I walked through it and took these photos, which don't convey much menace during the day.

Back in the day, or night as it were, there was a lot of graffiti that led me to think there were gangs that would hang out in the underpass.

As well as being devoted to martial arts, I was obsessed with hiphop and the craze of breakdancing. So I had seen a bit about the gangs that inhabited urban spaces like the inner-south of suburban Canberra.

Anyway, my mum had a more balanced perspective on the likelihood of me being assaulted while walking home in the dark wearing a martial arts uniform. She was of the view that all I needed was something to take my mind off the idea of being attacked.

So I came to memorise Hist! by C J Dennis after being offered $5. I can still recite a large part of the poem.

Hist! . . . . . . Hark!
The night is very dark,
And we've to go a mile or so
Across the Possum Park.

Step . . . . . . light,
Keeping to the right;
If we delay, and lose our way,
We'll be out half the night.
The clouds are low and gloomy. Oh!
It's just begun to mist!
We haven't any overcoats
And - Hist! . . . . . . Hist!

(Mo . . . . . . poke!)
Who was that that spoke?
This is not a fitting spot
To make a silly joke.

Dear . . . . . . me!
A mopoke in a tree!
It jarred me so, I didn't know
Whatever it could be.
But come along; creep along;
Soon we shall be missed.
They'll get a scare and wonder where
We - Hush! . . . . . . Hist!

Ssh! . . . . . . Soft!
I've told you oft and oft
We should not stray so far away
Without a moon aloft.

Oo! . . . . . . Scat!
Goodness! What was that?
Upon my word, it's quite absurd,
It's only just a cat.
But come along; haste along;
Soon we'll have to rush,
Or we'll be late and find the gate
Is - Hist! . . . . . . Hush!

(Kok!. . . . . . Korrock!)
Oh! I've had a shock!
I hope and trust it's only just
A frog behind a rock.

Shoo! . . . . . . Shoo!
We've had enough of you;
Scaring folk just for a joke
Is not the thing to do.
But come along, slip along -
Isn't it a lark
Just to roam so far from home
On - Hist! . . . . . . Hark!

Look! . . . . . . See!
Shining through the tree,
The window-light is glowing bright
To welcome you and me.

Shout! . . . . . . Shout!
There's someone round about,
And through the door I see some more
And supper all laid out.
Now, Run! Run! Run!
Oh, we've had such splendid fun -
Through the park in the dark,
As brave as anyone.

Laughed, we did, and chaffed, we did,
And whistled all the way,
And we're home again! Home again!
Hip . . . . . . Hooray!

These days parents would probably give their kid a mobile phone to carry in case of emergency but this poem really did assist in alleviating my fears. I'd walk alone through the dark reciting rhymes and when I got to the end, I'd start again.

More recently I recorded a version of C J Dennis' classic as part of my 2013 video presentation to conclude the centenary of Leeton. I offered my eldest son a financial incentive to learn the poem and we recorded him reciting it.  

Hist! was then added to a soundtrack composed from sounds recorded at a nearby playground, click hear to see it.

Where's my badge-sewing badge?

Sewing patches for the first time since I stopped buying them for my favourite metal bands circa 1990.

Growing old

When I ride into town I go over the train tracks outside the Rice Coop. There are two sets of tracks and often I’ll lift the front wheel or, if I’ve got enough speed, attempt to bunny-hop over.

Yesterday I was riding home and the wind wasn’t in my favour, so I only popped the front. A car passed between the first and second tracks and I distinctly heard a woman’s voice say "Grow up!"

It prompts me to reflect on how few parents I see joining their kids in the public pool or on playgrounds.  They're missing out.

Comparative mythology

This piece by Detritus Tabu for the Disquiet Junto this week is very funny and a beaut discussion of comparative mythology in how the conversation drifts from Christmas to Star Wars. Makes me wonder about the significance of the blockbuster openings at holiday times.

It's also a beaut for capturing one those conversations with kids where the sense of wonder and digression is surprising.

My response to the Junto was to accompany sounds from my neighbour's party with samples of festive music.

Oscar sings BitFinity

This year it was fun to start recording with Oscar. We recorded a few Smooth McGroove-style covers of videogame soundtracks and, yesterday, this video based on BitFinity's Waluigi-themed Carol of the Waa.

Tricks and treats this Halloween

Leeton’s Lillypilly Winery is teaming up with local musician Jason Richardson to host a Halloween party from 7pm on Saturday 31 October.

“It’ll be fun for all ages with creative pursuits, music and a spooky story,” said Mr Richardson.

“Traditionally it’s the time of year when spirits visit our world and Lillypilly are very kindly offering a complementary wine tasting for visiting adults, which should help raise spirits.”

The event will provide a venue for people who want to dress-up to mark the occasion.

“As a parent I know how much kids want to get into a costume and roam the streets in search of sugar. It got me thinking that it would be much better to provide an event where families could gather and share the thrill.”

Entertainment will include stories, hands-on activities, a movie and more.

“In previous years I’ve screened a silent movie in town as well as projecting my music videos and the film for this event will bring together both, with a silent film suitable for kids that I’ve created a soundtrack from music written and recorded in the last year or so.”

‘The Lost World’ is a classic film from 1925 that is based on a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, better known for writing the Sherlock Holmes stories. It’s remarkable for being the first feature to use stop-motion animation, as well as being the first film to be shown to airline passengers.

“I’m also looking forward to telling people about the troll that once lived in Leeton,” said Mr Richardson. “It’s a little-known fact that he was directly responsible for the creation of Fivebough Wetland.”

Learn more at Lillypilly Winery from 7pm on 31 October.

Kids watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Last night my son had a belated birthday party of sorts. He'd been asking for a "pizza party" for a while and we'd settled on eating then watching Scott Pilgrim with a few friends.

I'd been hesitating on screening the film since we last watched it. The representation of open homosexual relationships didn't seem appropriate for me to share with other people's kids. That was my issue with the film, anyway.

I really like Scott Pilgrim a lot and remember excitedly thinking I can't wait to share this with my then video game-obsessed toddler. I've seen it a lot since then and appreciate the way it evenhandedly represents relationships while being bright and loud and funny.

The kids persisted in asking for Scott Pilgrim and I concluded that it shouldn't be an issue for other people's kids to see homosexual relationships in a movie. One kid loudly questioned the gay character and everyone told him to get over it, which was great to see. By the end of the film there'd been more talk about veganism than homosexuality though, so maybe diet is more of a taboo these days?

Sexist sketches

Facebook's newsfeed offers many treats for the eyes and brain, the latest being a series of sketches on sexism at the Mentlegen page.

I showed these to my daughter and returned to hear her mother exclaiming pride. It was nice to also see her then redrafting and improving on her representation.

Still lifes for bonus lives

My daughter has been sick and stayed home for a few days rest. Last night she was delirious, kept asking when the school bus was coming.

Yesterday she started drawing a picture of a Gamecube controller for her brother. She knows he likes Gamecube games and wants him to like her art.

It made me look at the controller and imagine the perspective and the spaces within the shape and how I'd draw it. So I did.

Ansell LifeStyles condoms suck

Consider this a public service announcement: Ansell LifeStyles brand condoms break more than any other brand I've used.

Presumably the "added value" they promote on the box is the result of unplanned pregnancies.