An Ordinary Life Julie Boyd
CONTENTS Goddesses of strength A single conversation across the table with a wise (wo)man is worth a month's study of books. Chinese Proverb SMALL TOWN GIRL THE COMPANY OF WOMEN CLAYTON’S BRIDE’S OF CHRIST BREAKING THE MOLD IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT A HEDONISTS GUIDE TO DYING MID LIFE NONCRISIS The Best Days of Your Life What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of man can achieve. Napoleon Hill BLUE CAKE and BUILDING DREAMS HAPPY FAMILIES PRECIOUS BUNDLES GLOBAL KIDS WE ALL WON DRUNKEN PUDDINGS STUFF AND MUSIC ANTI THETICAL TOILET TRAINING THE BEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE You too can be a multi-millionaire - Love and other bruises Where there is love there is life
Mohandas Gandhi
FIRST LOVE TRUE LOVE LOSING MY VIRGINITY GETTING WET WEDDINGS and CONSEQUENCES Men and Other Pets No man is a complete mystery except to himself THE OLD MEN OF THE BUSH OUTED KNOCK KNOCK IS YOUR CERVIX HOME? MATURE AGE TODDLERS BOYS WILL BE BOYS DEEP SEA SURVIVING
Marcel Proust
Bastards I have Known Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears. Rudyard Kipling BOARD MEETINGS AND BLESSINGS BLOODY HELL BRIAN- ANOTHER BOARD MEETING BASTARDS I HAVE KNOWN VIOLATION ANNUS BLOODY HORRIBIILIS MUCHO GRANDE Only In America It’s going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth when they inherit it. WELCOME TO AMERICA ONLY IN AMERICA ORDER ON THE STARLIGHT EXPRESS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET Crazy or Dead Self Esteem plays as much a part in the destiny of nations as it does in the internal lives of individuals. Gloria Steinem AM I NUTS??? IS SHE DEAD? SMILES, BLACK HOLES and SLUSH BRAIN 15 MINUTES I DON’T HAVE SOLID KIDNEYS HOW ARE YOU OH HELL, HORMONES - Life in Stranger than Fiction Be both the changed and the changer...fully participate in the world. Be present. HOW BIZARRE WHAT’S IN A NAME PAPILLON STRANGER THAN STRANGE SENSEI ATTACK OF THE DEAD ECHIDNA MY BEACH THE BITCH GET A HAIRCUT AND GET A JOB
Goddesses of strength
A single conversation across the table with a wise (wo)man is worth a month's study of books.
SMALL TOWN GIRL I always wanted to be somebody – but I should have been more specific
Lily Tomlin
* * * * ‘Jules, you’re wanted on the phone’. This was unusual. Phone calls were rare at boarding school. I ran, thinking that something was wrong. It wasn’t. ‘The local progress association is organising a parade and we’d like to invite you to be Queen.’ Bloody hell. You must be kidding, I’m the most unqueenly person imaginable. I was always a tomboy when I was a kid. One of my earliest memories is of being used as a cricket wicket by the big boys. I was happy till I got knocked out by a wild swing from Micky Elliot and he had to tell my Mum he’d killed me. He hadn’t, but that was my first black eye. I was three. Baseball bats and balls, and huge lumps of timber from the mill provided others. I was actually good at sport for a while. Till I wrecked my knee and decided I didn’t understand competition at all. I never have really understood limitations. The town where I was born was one of those you might miss if you blink when you’re in a car. A tiny place. Everyone worked at the local timber mill. My Dad welded petrol tankers. Every time he did I waited for the explosion. It never came. He knew what he was doing. He never knew how good he was at his job and how brave people thought he was. The day the boiler that powered the entire place exploded and went up in an inferno was scary. Flames licking at the walls of our house. I thought we were going to die. Dad’s friend lost his arm when it was accidentally cut off by a band saw. I saw it lying there in the sawdust. A robot part, except for the screams and the blood. I still hear the screams. Heaps of people got hurt by the logs and the saws and other equipment. One friend broke his neck diving into a shallow river. We’d told him not to. Another shot himself carrying a loaded rifle while riding a motorbike. He’d wanted to be my boyfriend at one point. The safety catch had been on when he started. The bumps must have moved something. He survived but half his face and brain didn’t. A neighbours’ son hanged himself. An only child. His mother almost went insane. They hadn’t expected it. Ever present danger. An inordinate number died of cancer or had miscarriages, which noone thought strange. Bushfires surrounding us, licking hungrily at the edges, as the whole town gathered on the local footy field, totally cut off from the rest of the world. I still have nightmares about fire and wind. Bushfires still haunt me as an adult. To become educated you had to go away to Boarding School as you could only go to Year 10 at the local school, and that was by correspondence. The teachers were sent these as punishment for playing up at Teacher’s College. They were fun. They either loved it and stayed forever, or went crazy by the end of their first year.
‘Why’ I asked? To say any more would have been a betrayal to the kids who were still stuck there, not able to escape at all. ‘Well you’re the only girl we can find who is under 25 and not married, pregnant or has kids already’. I was 14. It was that kind of place. I always felt different- somehow. Promoted too rapidly at school as a four year old, I objected to leaving my friends. I didn’t realise it was because the teacher thought I was smart. She smacked me gently with a ruler for being rude to her, she is still mortified by that. One smack, 45 years of apologies. Laughing at another teacher who fried his new car’s engine because noone had told him it needed oil and water. Even a seven year old knows how to drive a vehicle in the countrypeople die otherwise. On my 18th birthday I drove the local cop around the block after he’d presented me with my license. He’d watched me driving for years already. My grandfather taught most kids in the district to drive and he was the best. Surviving an attack by a psychotic student who stuck a knitting needle into my brain. At Uni later we used to do that to cane toads to paralyse and kill them ‘painlessly’. I don’t think she thought I was a toad, she was just scared that day. Another teacher took delight in routinely breaking solid pieces of wood across the bums of non-compliant students in the name of discipline. He hit me once. I’d challenged him to stop picking on the boys and he was giving me equal opportunity treatment. I threatened to go to the police. He laughed. His wife left him eventually. Being nailed to a board, literally. My crucifixion appropriate as I was leaving for Catholic boarding school. I stood on the nail in the main street. I had shoes on, the nail went right through shoe and foot. Was poking out the top. Ewwwwww. Ouch. Dealing with the daily approaches and inappropriate touching and flashing by the local pedophile. I remember how silly he looked with his limp penis hanging out. Pathetic. He later attempted suicide, Went crazy and took his secrets with him. So did we. Our parents never knew. Maybe karma does exist. There were wonderful times too. Picnics. Picking wild blackberries and mulberries. Going home rainbow coloured and sated. Fresh trout straight from a pristine river cooked on a campfire. Swimming in a free flowing river. I wonder if my granchildren will still experience that. Tobogganing down the mountain behind our house on sheets of plastic and in old suitcases. It’s a wonder we didn’t break our necks. Being allowed a liquor glass of wine at dinner with friends. It tasted terrible but also made me feel so sophisticated at 10. Mrs Higgs’ sugar bin. A massive woman, she had huge food bins in her kitchen. The sugar bin held a whole sackful. I could stand up in it. When I was little, my favorite treat was to stand beside it with a spoon and just eat spoonful after spoonful. Is that why I have such a sweet tooth? Playing with the women’s footy team. I was a rover because I was quick- had to practice running away from potential black eyes. Mrs Higgs just stood in the goal square. Noone could get past her. She was 22 stone(140 kg?), a great fullback!
Wonderful educational times with the old men of the bush. No senseless clear-felling or destructive wood-chipping in those days. They taught me the art of careful selection, of connoisseurship, of discernment and sensitivity: ‘this tree can be felled. That one can’t because…...’. Then a plan, a cuppa and silent communion with the tree before they felled it expertly. Skills I have tried to translate into my forays with lovers! Then there were my favorite teachers. My special one was year 8 science. His name was Mr Bruce. He would take us out at night star spotting. We did environmental studies before they became fashionable. He made science lessons magic. Because of him I wanted to be a scientist. I dreamed of being an astronomer. I wonder if he was ever conscious of the impact he had on my life. Waltzing at country balls with my Dad a special memory. Feeling like a princess in my first long ballgown. It was baby blue, fitted bodice, and long swirling skirt that flowed around us like a stream as we waltzed around the town hall. Shiny, strokeable, satin. I loved it. I was 15. It still fitted on my 40th birthday, long after he’d died. I knew that the only way I would survive was by escaping. The other kids, particularly the boys, used to call me ‘wild thing’. There was a popular song of the same name at the time. I wasn’t wild, just different. I wasn’t interested in finding the boy of my dreams. I knew he wasn’t there. I didn’t want to stay trapped in a small place when I knew there was a huge world waiting to be found. I felt like an explorer. Ready to tackle the great unknown even from an incredibly early age. Uncomfortable with complacency and the expectations of others that I would simply conform, I took great delight in providing the locals with gossip. Something to talk about until I came home with the next ‘shocking episode’. Arriving home on the back of a giant Harley Davidson from Uni. with a formidable guy- my first Rob. He looked scary in his mud spattered black leathers. I guess I did too. He was actually a teddy bear in disguise who loved my Mum’s roast lamb. Wearing ‘outrageous’ fashions (were hot pants really that bad if your legs were OK?). Shouting the truckie who had lifted my mini car off the ground and held it up for me so I could change the tyre when I’d had a flat and no jack- dinner at the local pub. I was the first girl to go to an all boy's school. No such thing as co-education back then. I was the first girl to get put on the pill for my skin. Catholic Boarding school A doctor’s prescription for the pill plus regular drinks of whiskey and lemon juice to try and kill my sweet tooth didn’t quite go together with 5am Mass and alter wine. The look on Reverend Mother’s face when she was told of the Doctors orders, priceless. Partying with the young teachers who had been sent to the town, often as punishment for misbehaving at teachers’ college. Lucky me. We had a great time. I escaped. I went back several times. Each visit the town became wearier, my former classmates grew old before my eyes. Life seemed to pass them by. The living dead. At
one wedding, the bride and groom were both 16. Both so wide eyed and scared. I’m sure neither of them had yet figured out how she’d become pregnant. My home was bulldozed. Not my memories. Arty types moved in and tried to change the culture. They succumbed. It was either that or leave. Country towns are like that. After several lifetimes of adventures and travel, I’ve recently moved back again to a small town. The mores and values haven’t changed much. Neither have the characters. Just the location.
THE COMPANY OF WOMEN Participation in meaningful community is the greatest unacknowledged hunger of our time Anon. * * * * ‘My earliest memory was of my doll’s head being broken by a soldier” she said as she showed me the fading tattoo on the inside of her wrist I remember the conversation as if it was yesterday. I was quite young at the time- about 10 I think. One of my mother’s friends was describing to me her experiences of Auschwitz during the war. She was only 3 or 4 she thought. The full horror didn’t hit until many years later. Her two strongest memories seemed to be of her doll and using charcoal to clean her teeth, not knowing where the charcoal came from. She remembered the ovens. She lost her family there. She was the only survivor. So was her doll, albeit broken. She was extremely exotic for our little town. Wealthy beyond what any of us could contemplate. Her friends owned houses in the city with tennis courts and nannies and laundries on the fourth floor. She and her family lived in the big house on the hill. A European beauty with European ways in a tiny outback aussie town. She had the most amazing kitchen. Full of new gadgets with French and German names, all the very best quality. She was the one who convinced my Dad to let me have a liquor glass of wine with dinner, who involved me in adult conversations about comparative religion and frequently invited my opinion. She later introduced us to the intricacies of eating frogs legs and snails and ‘attending’ jazz clubs. A stunningly beautiful woman I remember her incredibly white teeth and her smile most of all. She went on to own a highly successful and respected restaurant in Melbourne. Edna was a totally different kettle of fish. Certainly not beautiful to look at but the most capable and competent woman I’ve ever met. The original ‘woman in overalls and comfortable shoes’. She’d been in the army. She and the friend she lived with had done everything from fixing trucks to fixing bodies and just about everything in between. They were always accepted-
never questioned. The word lesbian was unknown in my little town. They were just a bit different. Edna was the ultimate community person. If something needed to be done, a new church built, new school for the kids, drama club started, she would make it happen. She was a director extraordinaire. When a new swimming pool was needed for the town, she would get it done. She would literally turn her hand to anything. She would hassle politicians, extract money from the meanest people, bully those who weren't pulling their weight. She was absolutely fearless. I remember her finally mastering water-skiing on her 80th birthday. She wasn’t a card carrying member of the CWA- that other band of intrepid ‘don’t mess with us when we’re in our stilettos’ females without which no country town survives, but she did far more than her share. People have always been a powerful influence for me. My role models and mentors have come from all genders, socio-economic strata, professions … I have always valued the company of women. My earliest role models were these and other incredible people from this tiny place, who had forged lives for themselves and those they cared about using shared resources. It was from women that I learned the strength of collaboration. From the men I learned the value of silence, the strength of simple touch, the power of unspoken mateship, the difference between being lonely and solitary.
My favourite Aunt. A teacher back when it was a vocation not a profession. Her stories of survival in a one teacher/five pupil school at a miniscule place called Cabbage Tree, the stuff of legend. She was a brilliant teacher. I still enjoy wonderful conversations with her. Too bad the bloody bureaucracy decided after 30 years of churning out kids who loved and respected her that she ‘wasn’t qualified’ any more. Why not. She’d been to college, had her bits of paper. Is 30 years of real teaching, not just surviving in a classroom, worth nothing? What an unbelievable waste, what a loss to the teaching profession. What a lost opportunity to mentor the newbies coming through. What an incredibly stupid and shortsighted ‘system’. My one surviving Great Aunt. What a brilliant woman. Smart as a tack and so worldly wise at 85. Believes her great grandaughter should have had an abortion. ‘I love to have a beer with Mollie’. Someone should write a song about her. In between, my friends. Bernie who tried to teach me to paint. Sabine who tried desperately to show me how to be a lady. Trea and Sue who helped me learn how to build mudbrick houses. Who needs a bloke when a mulcher on old carpet to mix the mud will do the job.
Fiona who taught me which veggies and flowers to plant together and how to cook on a wood stove Meg who taught me to appreciate good food and fine wine, Mary who taught me how to use a milk separator and make real butter. Fae who taught me about eating life, and laughter, and survival- especially when you dump a car with closed electronic windows upside down in a river with you still inside. Laura who taught me how to make the emotional vampires go away. Who saved me when others who didn’t know me at all told me I’d been ‘let down by God.’ I had. Polly who tried to organise me while I taught her to be a hedonist and we both learned to die. Bob who helped me accept that it’s OK to be ‘all about me’ and just drink cruisers and play with the puppies sometimes. So much more. So many more. Constantly blessed with new ones. All loved and deeply appreciated in their turn- for their skills, their love and their being. The healers who helped me when I was really, really ill at various times. Mies the world’s most magnificent masseur who used to transport me to places way beyond my body where colours and warmth and energy healed me, helped me walk again. Marg who used new fangled ancient techniques to help me through my latest cancer scare, Tamara who did crazy things with biochemicals and electric currents and helped me combat the most recent bout of chronic fatigue. Maria who moved into my offices, brought healing energy and healing hands to help me put away my walking sticks again. Then there were the ones who taught me other stuff. No longer friends, if they ever were. The emotional terrorists. The energy vampires. The ones who taught me the utter waste of selfishness and spite and lying and cheating and hurting people. I still shudder when I think of some of them. I still have to be ‘en guarde’ to protect myself against their power. There was a time when I was totally surrounded by women. At home, in business, at play. Everywhere. Bit of an overdose really. No wonder my poor son needed to escape. Capable women, silly women, selfish women, psychopathic women, troppo women, greedy women. I thought I preferred their company to men. I was wrong. My closest male friends stuck by me through that time. Thank the gods for them. In America I discovered the women’s networks are almost as powerful as the men’s, perhaps moreso in some of the circles I was moving in at the time. Want to work in Utah? You’d be surprised at the power of the women in high places there. Not women in comfortable shoes, but women in powerful pumps. And everyone thinks it’s a patriarchal society. What do they know. As one friend told me, ‘the safest place to hide as a former Mormon is in Salt Lake City in the shadow of the tabernacle. They’ll find you anywhere else in the world’. Where do the lapsed Catholics all hide, I wondered? In San Francisco I found circles of women, sometimes very powerful in their chosen profession, too scared to move outside their community. They wore their sexual preference like a badge of honour. ‘Come make a martyr of me- but don’t hurt me’. I always thought that gay women had a serious problem with community acceptance until I started to move in those circles and realised that it’s a reciprocal issue. I met some lovely people. Very together. Bringing up beautiful kids, in longer term relationships than most of the hetero couples I knew. But the majority were so incredibly insecure. Not in their jobs, but in their self-perception, self-acceptance. Too scared to come out, even to their families, for fear of retribution. Why? My experience was that you just assumed that people accept you for who you are and don’t hang labels unless you invite them to. People tend to be
most scared of what lies outside their own experience. Most fearful of what they don’t know. That works both ways. I’m still not sure if that’s cultural as in American or lesbian, or personal - the result of early experience. Once at a party I was awe struck by the incestuous nature of relationships and unfinished business floating around the room. An oestrogen smog. Everyone being so lovely and accepting of the fact that their girlfriend of 5 years was now sleeping with their best friend. Let’s all pretend to be happy about it. Sex wasn’t a major issue at all. The levels of deceit and dishonesty were what I found so hard. I couldn’t make sense of the rules. I didn’t care who they slept with, or why, they were all just people to me. As I’ve grown older I’ve learned to value the women in my family even more. My mum, who along with my dad taught me the importance of family, of living with love rather than fear, and of letting kids be kids for as long as possible. Growing up happens far too quickly. I always found it hard to understand the kids who didn’t like their parents- till I found I was very much the exception because I loved mine. How sad. My friends envious, so we simply absorbed them all into our family. From this tiny town our family now stretches across continents. If women are going to save the human race, we need to nurture the right ones. How best to help them. The fight for equality has become what, the fight to try and sort out our roles, again? What were we fighting for? The right to spend as little time with our kids as the men did? We need to mentor the ‘trainee women’ as Fae referred to our daughters when they were little. But for what? I see a subtle difference in my daughter’s generation. They take for granted the need to be independent. It’s now the norm rather than the exception. Their standards are scarily high. They know they will survive and thrive on their own terms. Not for them sacrificing a life on the altar of someone else’s wishes. That has translated to putting off having kids often until its too late for anything but regrets. It also doesn’t stop the insecurity and vulnerability and the need for a hug from their mum or their aunties. We need to sustain the songline of wonder and goodness that we’ve created across the generations, and through our chosen family. How best to do that. Become one of them. As my friend Tim best explains it ‘become a Boddhisattva, a Kuan Yin, Artemis, a Goddess Diana’. The strong, capable, vulnerable, truly compassionate ones who can achieve miracles. Or is that too much to ask?
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