In between dating and old age

January 20, 2014 by 14 Comments

between dating and old ageLast night I dropped my son and his friend at the movies. They were meeting two girls. At the movies. At night. In my mind that’s a double date. Oh my god. My little boy on a double date.

Except he’s insistent it wasn’t a date. He’s probably even right. He just went to the movies with three friends. Two of them were girls and his mother is the irritating kind of woman who puts everything into little boxes that fit her preconceived social structures just right.

It took everything in my arsenal of zen mum not to insist on phoning the mothers of the two girls , I didn’t even vet them outside the movies. In fact, I actually dropped the boys outside with firm instructions to always treat girls (and everyone else) with utmost respect and then I drove away as if I didn’t have a care in the world. In fact if I wasn’t telling you now you’d never have even guessed that I was going straight to the Chemist to check out their supply of natural calmatives.

Armed with only the boring common-or-garden variety of rescue drops, I went back into the shopping centre to wait for the mother of Little Pencil’s friend. We urgently needed to talk, as girlfriends that haven’t seen each other for a whole day need to talk, and I urgently needed to be within jumping distance of my son should he need me (which I knew he wouldn’t but I was sticking to my excuse).

As I waited for my friend to come and join me I watched the people around me. In particular I watched the people that were leaving the movies.

It dawned on me that people who go to afternoon movies are of a very particular demographic. They’re almost all over seventy. Most of them are women (a common “problem” in a society where women outlive men) and they walk slowly and carefully, the weight of age making its mark on their every movement. They no longer stand straight rather they bow to their age.

I had just let my little boy go and here I was, somewhere between the teenager racing off with all the exuberance of youth to his ”non-date” and the old women at the movies who bore the burden of way too many dates. Literally in the middle of these two lives – about 30 years away from the teen and about 30 years away from going to afternoon movies.
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It briefly occurred to me to be happy that I was still so young, so snugly in between the two ages so as not to be old (although my son would laugh for days if I tried to explain that I was as close to his age as I was to old age). I looked at these people and tried to imagine where I would be in 30 years time. I felt a little bleak when I realised that not many of them were smiling on the inside. In fact now that I recall it not many were smiling on the outside either.

Perhaps I should be giving people benefit of the doubt, maybe they had all just walked out of a movie like Philomena and they were really feeling very emotional. But maybe not. There is a certain somberness that comes with being an adult.

All the learning, maturing and developing that we do in our youth is unfettered with the stress of responsibility. All the learning we do as adults seems to weigh us down. I’m not looking forward to going to afternoon movies and coming out afterwards looking like I’ve been eating lemons and my days on earth are numbered by a clock sitting heavily on my back . I’m not looking forward to being old, although the other option is worse.

How do we ensure that we grow old happily? What’s the secret to keeping the exuberance of life as a teen ticking along when you are older ? How do we bear responsibility while still maintaining optimism? .

Maybe the answer lies in seeing a movie with a date. And not in the afternoon.

Maybe we just shouldn’t waste all of our youth on our youth.

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In defence of “Boy Power”

November 21, 2013 by 21 Comments

I have just watched another “viral” ad aimed at telling girls how awesome they are. Watch it when you have time. It’s clever

If you can’t watch it right now it’s an ad for toy company GoldieBlox, which has developed toys and games to “disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers.” Debbie Sterling, the company’s CEO studied engineering and was dismayed by the lack of women in her classes (only 11 percent of the world’s engineers are female).  The ad basically shows some little girls tossing away the idea of princesses and dolls using toys and household items to create a Rube Goldberg machine.

But as I watched it and started humming along to the Beastie Boys melody they used, I started to wonder about the boys. Where is the ad telling boys that they can be hairdressers and nurses and teachers, primary caregivers and personal assistants? Where are the ads displaying boys that aren’t playing sport, video games or watching TV?

Now stick with me here. Don’t think for a second that I am crying about the “poor middle class white boy”, I’m not. I just want you to think about this.

I know that the fight for gender equality is right and fair. I fully support, and am part of, the feminist movement and believe that women should have equal pay, equal access to jobs, equal treatment across the board.

I don’t think little girls should be marketed to as inferior and of course I don’t think they should just be given pink dolls and princess outfits to play with when they are young. Nor only sparkly nail polish and make-up as they get older.

In much the same way I believe little boys shouldn’t be marketed to as if their only interests are building, driving and fighting. I don’t think we should market only blue toys, guns, swords, building equipment and cars to young boys. Nor only video games and sports equipment as they get older.

There is often an outcry when pink hairdryers (for want of a better example) are aimed at girls. Less of an outcry when toy trucks are marketed to boys.

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superman-kidAnd we should continue to reinforce that message. It’s a good one.

But we shouldn’t forget to reinforce strong messages for our boys. That THEY can be anything they want – they can be gentle and kind and emotional and display their feelings. That they don’t HAVE to like sport and violence and drinking games. That they can do anything that girls can do.

And this message gets even more important as our boys enter their teens and grow into the socially accepted steretypes that we normalise through the way teenage boys are displayed in the media.

On the weekend Wendy Tuhoy wrote a column I loved, entitled Do not demonise our boys, she writes:

…there are themes emerging from the latest debate about what is now known as “rape culture” that some parents of boys are finding disturbing, with good reason. The subtext of some of the discussion is that teen boys are such forces of nature as to be potential sexual predators just waiting to happen.

The sense that inside every sweet-faced teenaged boy there is a sex offender waiting to get out is real enough to being discussed among some parents.

…The suggestion that ‘boys are second class now’, even though it arises from the awful crimes in New Zealand and Maryville, Mississippi (where a 14 year-old girl was lured into a basement by older boys, given pure alcohol and raped, along with her 13 year-old friend) makes me angry.
I don’t want my girl growing up feeling threatened by the idea of boys and I don’t want my boys thinking they should fear some potential demon within themselves that they cannot control.

I’m all for Girl Power, but as the mother of a son I’m also keen for him to know that I believe in equality of the sexes. As much as I want him to respect women, to be caring, compassionate, kind and generous, to be happy and fulfilled in all his decisions, I want him to be proud of being a boy, proud to grow into a man. Just as I am proud of the man that he is growing to be.

We don’t have to choose one or the other. Everyone can aspire to be an engineer.

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For everyone who says they wouldn’t hesitate in employing someone with a mental illness…

June 17, 2013 by 8 Comments

Matt Kenyon 1411It would be wrong to say that last week was particularly hard for my husband – because in reality it was no different to most weeks.  No different to most weeks dealing with a family member who is really sick and has no chance of being cured yet being no closer to death. Just sick. Stuck with paranoid schizophrenia.

I could see him at times buckling under the pressure. Feeling the weight of his brother on his shoulders, in his veins – coursing through everything he does.  Feeling equal parts angered and repulsed by the illness at the same time as feeling huge love, compassion and sympathy.

This week his brother has called him or texted him at least 3 times a day. Like he always does.  Some days it’s many more. That doesn’t sound too bad – hell there are thousands of people who would love so much contact with their family. But, the messages his brother leaves are often confused, always pleading and mostly heartbreaking.

Uncle Pencil (which is what I will call him for now) has no friends. Not even acquaintances.  His days are empty and alone.  He has very little reason to get out of bed in the morning. Bar phoning his brother (and sometimes his mother and father), Uncle Pencil has no real contact with the outside world.  He comes over for dinner to our place or my sister once a week (my sister’s family treat him like one of their own) – that takes care of 4 hours, the other 164 hours of the week he’s alone. With the voices in his head.

These voices don’t make for very good company. They aren’t nurturing, they convince him things are wrong when they aren’t. They’re louder than we are – they’ve made him believe that he can’t communicate outside of his immediate family when all he wants to do is “fit in”.

He’s as sad as he is sick.

Last week I read an article about employing people with mental illness. All it took was the Twitter link to pique my interest. All Uncle Pencil wants is a job. He just wants to fit in – he wants to have people to talk to, to go to, he wants to feel a sense of worth. He wants a job.  The article says:

“Mitchell, 38, suffers from bipolar disorder. He is also author of Bipolar: a path to acceptance, about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and how he learned to manage his illness. As a father of four, Mitchell wanted to show it’s possible to balance running a business with raising a family, all while managing his condition.

He says he would hire someone with a mental illness “as long as it is managed responsibly”. Mitchell believes: “It’s important for everyone to know that you can get there in the end and triumph over your mental illness.

When he has previously hired someone with a mental illness, he was proactive in supporting them. “On becoming aware of their illness I mentored them so that they could empower themselves to take the necessary action and ownership of their recovery plan,” he says.

I can almost guarantee you Mitchell would not hire my brother-in-law. Or he might. For a day.  Uncle Pencil’s illness does not look pretty. It’s not something you “become aware of” over time.  It’s there, it’s so much a part of him that it’s a part of his physicality.  Last week he shaved his own head – just some parts of it, random spots on the top of his head. Even without the haircut he looks scary – but that’s mostly just because you can see his own fear coming through in his eyes.
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And his behaviour is well, it’s mad. He’s not dangerous and in fact he’s not scary (even though he looks it)  he’s just not in touch with reality and following his train of thought is hard.

He manages his illness as responsibly as he can.  He takes his medication, he tries to continue going to occupational therapy and support groups but often he gets there and runs away because he is so frightened.

Hiring someone with a mental illness like schizophrenia is not like hiring someone with depression or anxiety. Oh Uncle Pencil has those in spades – but he’s “mad”.  Properly, distressingly, socially inappropriate and deluded

The article goes on to say

“Susan Bower, 41, owns Dressed for Success, a Brisbane-based property styling business. Like Mitchell, she would hire someone with a mental illness. “As a business owner that suffers from depression myself, I know that with treatment, people with mental illnesses can function just as well as anybody else.

“Mental illness is now emerging as a more common illness, so the likelihood of employing someone with a mental illness is much higher whether they disclose it or not.”

Uncle Pencil has no choice about disclosing his illness. It’s written on his face with the pain and fear he carries around Every. Single. Day.  However forward thinking and benevolent and depressed and anxious Australian employers are, they are running a mile from people like Uncle Pencil.

I’m not having a go at employers, I’m certainly not having a go at Valerie Khoo who wrote the article because I applaud anyone who starts the conversation. I do want to applaud organisations like Each, Nova Employment , even the ridiculously under resourced Job Access but I know that Uncle Pencil is too sick to work and worse than that he’s too sick to stay at home alone all day.

For everyone who says they would not hesitate in employing someone with a mental illness, nothing  would make me happier than introducing you to Uncle Pencil.  Give me a call

 

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Do not click on this link unless you have tissues at hand

June 12, 2013 by 14 Comments

This is the saddest video you will see today. I’ve watched it more than once and I won’t even tell you how many times it’s made me cry.

The background: a woman by the name of Linda Whitaker captured this heartbreakingly beautiful moment between her parents (who had been married 66 years) while her father was in the hospital.

It may seem odd that I have chosen to put it up on my birthday but stick with me.  After you’ve wiped away your tears of course.

I know it may not be terribly hip or contemporary to admit that You Are My Sunshine is amongst on of my favourite songs, but at the risk of losing all credibility I’m going to lay it on the line and run with it.

When my husband and I met a billion years ago we where fresh faced teens, well at least I was – he had stubble. But we were young and naïve and in love and we had our first kiss in Cape Town, South Afica in 1985 when the song Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits was already a little hipster. The song formed the backdrop of our blooming love on that holiday and we named it ours.
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Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins was on the first album I bought for him – and it really was an album, made of vinyl and everything.

When we got married we had our first dance to the dulcet tones of Phil Collins singing “Groovy Kind of Love”, a song that I had chosen myself (not very weddingy to choose songs without your groom but still) while Mr Pencil holidayed overseas with his friends a couple years before the wedding and I thought I might die of loneliness without him. I think I played the song on repeat a billion times and I don’t remember if we had yet even spoken about marriage when I declared it our wedding song.

But through the Dire Straits, the Thomson Twins, the many years of Tracy Chapman, my maudlin fascination with Cat Stevens, the Phil Collins, Depeche Mode, UB40, Midnight Oil, Talking Heads and Bloodhound Gang (him not me) right through to my current fascination with Macklemore (mine not his), Passenger and Bastille there is one song that still makes me think of my husband every single time I think of it or sing it to myself – because let’s be honest you don’t hear “You are my sunshine” on the radio all that very often.

This is the song that sums up exactly how I feel about him – he IS my sunshine, he makes me feel happy when skies are gray and I don’t know what I would ever do without him.

And my wish – and it’s my birthday so I get to make wishes that will come true – is that when we have been married for 66 years we will still be singing this song together.

sunshine

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“Don’t try to fix it. I just need you to listen”

May 28, 2013 by 21 Comments

I cannot tell you how lucky I am to have the husband that I have. He is kind, considerate, compassionate, hugely intelligent and he loves me. He is also the best father I know. Bar none.

Sounds perfect right? It pretty much is but for one small issue. He is very much a male and I am very much a female and at the risk of making the biggest generalisations in the world and some blatantly stereotypical statements this sometimes causes a problem.

You see he wants to solve and I want to talk. He wants to fix and I want to vent. I want someone to listen to my every feeling and he wants to remedy problems.

Typical male typical female?
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Just watch this video and see if you get the same guilty blush that I did.

It made me laugh out loud.

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